One pool of judges for varsity and novice divisions (updated)

I always prefer to set tournaments up myself. I maintain that setting up a tournament in tabroom is both the most important thing to get right, and the most difficult thing to get right. I do it all the time and I still miss things, a little setting here or there that throws something off in the middle of a tournament. Hell, I’ve followed CP on tournaments he’s set up at Lexington, trusting blithely to his skills, and still run into some missed item that’s thrown something off in the middle of a tournament. So it goes.

Anyhow, one thing I always try to do, if there’s a novice and varsity division of the same activity, is keep the pools totally separate starting at the moment of registration. Separate pools, separate obligations. This is easy enough to do at tournaments when those divisions run completely separately, but at smaller local events that might not be the case. It’s also not necessarily the case when someone else sets up a tournament I end up tabbing. It might just be a mistake on their part, or maybe because of the way they're arranging the finances they don’t want separate pools, even though some judges will be novice-only. (Let's face it: tabroom isn’t very good at breaking down judge obligations that way. It’s good enough at all or nothing, but once it’s a little bit here and a little bit there, not so good. Partial judges, for instance, as of this writing still don’t work correctly, i.e., adding half a judge one day and half a judge the other day. Tabroom is supposed to charge you for missing halves, but it doesn’t. A school can get by with only half its obligated judges if you’re not paying attention to the invoices)

If a tournament does have only one pool, but some judges are novice-only, here’s how I’ve been handling it. I create a separate judge pool for the varsity division. I put all the varsity judges in there. Then I have a list on the side of the novice-only judges (although putting them into yet another pool won't hurt, because that way their status is noted on their judge page, but it's probably not necessary unless there's a boatload of them). Then for each round I tab the novice division first, using all judges. After that, I tab the varsity division using the varsity pool. That way tabroom keeps track of judge use, so available extra judges, if needed, are indeed available and not conflicted. I realize that it’s counterintuitive to tab the novices first if you’re used to TRPC, but that’s the way to do it. If you find that you don’t have enough judges for the varsity division because too many were used for the novices, you can pull at that point from the used judges to juggle things. The point is, you’re going to have to juggle things one way or the other. Juggling this way uses tabroom to the fullest, I think.

UPDATE: My doing the varsity after the novices was predicated on usually having a small number of varsity-only and a large number of novice-only. If the situation is reversed (as it was at Lakeland 2015), it makes sense to do the varsity first.

However you do it, it will lead to hassles in the break rounds if you don't create very specific pools for each division. Since tabroom keeps track of time slots, it will handle much of the heavy lifting if your schedule is accurate, but if you don't draw from the right places, you'll be bringing in either the wrong judges or judges who are no longer obligated. Taking care of pools in break rounds is a given, in any case. It's just more of a given in this situation.