When you lose a player...
Directing the Devon Congress this weekend I twice found myself losing a player permanently (not through technical issues). Once was in the 5th round of 6, and once just after half way through.
For the first day, a substitute had been arranged - someone willing to play if called on. Unfortunately when I needed her she was on her way out because she had assumed she wasn't needed after the event had been going for a while. I can understand that (although it wasn't what we were aiming for).
I eventually found players to step in to cover, but it took time.
All this leads onto "How do directors prepare for losing a player?"
In an event with 2 or 3 board rounds we would just carry on with a sitout. With 7 board rounds that has to be a last resort only.
Having been (almost) caught out by this, I came up with a few ideas:
1) For teams, ask the captain to have a backup in mind.
2) Have a "bank" of 3 or 4 (or more) people who, whilst not committing to anything, would be willing to step in if they were available at the time.
3) Always have at least two directors so one can step in while the other carries on directing while trying to find a substitute.
4) Pay someone to be an "on-call" substitute, so the (not insignificant) commitment to be available all day is on a proper footing and duly rewarded
What does everyone do?
Comments
I think you've covered all of the best ideas assuming that you can get in a human substitute.
That option aside, it is possible to run a makeshift triangle on RealBridge with each pair in the triangle playing 3 out of the 7 boards. Obviously, clear communication is essential and you'd ideally want pairs that are comfortable with the technology! After the round is complete, you can adjust the scores so that the correct pairs are attributed with the correct results and so that the Swiss movement works out ok. Unhelpfully, RealBridge doesn't allow adjustments to total score yet so it may be a bit fiddly.
The alternative is to ask for a volunteer pair in the field to drop out of the event. This could be a pre-agreed arrangement in return for not paying for entry, but this could work out poorly if the pair in question are doing very well for instance. A similar alternative is to ask for a volunteer pair during the event... with a sufficiently large field, some of the pairs (particularly those not doing as well as hoped or perhaps a pair that are getting tired) may well be happy to volunteer to leave and even up the numbers. Neither of the options is ideal of course but better, as you say, than a long sitout. RealBridge will have to confirm whether removing 2 pairs will allow a Swiss event to run normally, but I suspect it would be fine.
How would you do this? Don't triangles need an extra (1/2) set of boards (which RB doesn't alllow)?
I think he's talking about Swiss Pairs triangles, which work by having NS playing against one EW for 3 boards and another EW for 4 boards. The EW pairs share the pain by sitting out for 3 or 4 boards rather than 7.
I've asked the question of Realbridge - will report back later.
It has occured to me that even if RB can't do it, I could just get the two unmatched pairs to sit opposite each other and then skip all the boards on the table with no players. Sort out the scoring later if needed.
The reply I got was:
Not yet - we plan to make this change soon, not in the next release.
Fair enough, I know they've already got a long list of features to add!
Thinking ahead to events like the Virtual Seaside congress, it would also be useful to be able to add pairs I imagine? Last year, at the Year End(?), I recall the EBU having lots of standby pairs to allow for possible withdrawals after one day, and I imagine some of them didn't get to play because you can't add extra pairs. In turn, being able to make adjustments to one's total score in the interface would facilitate that.
Both of the above are possible using RealBridge Config files which are very flexible but have to be uploaded prior to a session so, if you know the exact numbers each day, then it's perfect, but otherwise it might be a feature worth asking for in plenty of time.
You can upload config files multiple times. It was not a difficult task to edit a config file and reupload when it turned out that the list of (40) tables I had used was not the same as the one that had been sent to the teams (took about 5 mins, including finding the "proper" list).