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.

Dropping and deleting entries

There are times in a tournament when, for whatever reason, someone goes away and you don't want to see their name again anywhere. A whole team might leave early (as happened to us at Penn), or a judge walks out never to return, or a kid comes down with the yaws—the possibilities are endless.

To delete a whole school: DON'T. There is a function where you can delete a school, all the entries and judges in one fell swoop, but it's hard to imagine when this might be a good idea. Before a tournament starts, you might want to make note, permanently, of unpaid fees. Deleting a school destroys the record of their pre-tournament shenanigans. During a tournament, deleting competitors renders all the people they competed against incomplete. Inevitably there will come the day when you're working on a tournament and a school gets deleted in the middle of things. This is the day that you will rue.

To delete a student: Drop the student. That's simple enough. Fees owed for the student will remain, as will the count of students judges are theoretically covering. If you go further and delete the student, there's no record of that student's existence, and the people who debated that student are screwed.

If a dropped student comes back: Undrop the student. It happens that students reported as sick are miraculously healed. Next to any dropped student's name is an undrop button. If you undrop someone, you might have to force in a forfeit or two, but any rounds actually competed in will stand, and life can go on.

To delete a judge: Mark as inactive. You can delete a judge, probably without too much damage to an event, but this will leave no record of the judge, or of a team's coverage requirements and the like. On the other hand, you can toggle active and inactive till the cows come home with no damage to anyone whatsoever.

Room and judge pools

CP sets up a nice, neat tournament. I tabbed what he set up for Lexington, and pass along two things.

First, he set up rooms in advance, via room pools, for every round. With big college tournaments, where we’re switching buildings all the time, I also do that, but if I’m in one building all the time, i.e., the average high school, I do it the other way around. That is, I remove rooms from the pool when we get into elims, rather than setting them up first. His way is tidier, although a little more labor intensive. It might be a best practice, though. By the way, unless you have a very simple tournament without break rounds, room pools are a must. I think that’s one of the hardest things for people to figure out about tabroom.

Second, he set up a judge pool for each elim round after the first one, which of course uses all judges. You fill the next pool after the previous round goes off; this is all on the paneling/judges/pool-judges page. It will move in only the obligated schools and the hireds. I’ve just been making one pool of break-round judges and trimming it after each round. His way is definitely better, another best practice. One additional thing I do like to do, though it isn't necessary, is mark judges inactive so that they won’t show at all in any pool. Tabroom ignores time-struck judges, so it’s not as if they’ll be used, but if I see a lot of judges that look like they’re there, I want them to actually be there. We all have our anal moments.

MJP deadlines

This is probably worth passing along.

If you use MJP at your tournament, you will want to set it up so that teams can’t pref unless their judges are all in place. That’s easy enough. You’ll also want everyone’s teams to stay in place. That's not so easy, especially if you have, shall we say, inevitably disorganized loosey-goosey teams attending your tournament (and you probably do). There is only one thing more annoying than getting judge changes once MJP opens and having to tell everyone to go back and redo their prefs, and that's actually being the everyone constantly going in and redoing their prefs. That vague "everyone" isn't blaming the loose geese (leese geese? loose gooses) for the extra work: they're blaming you.

So, a piece of advice. Open prefs late. If the tournament starts on Friday afternoon, open them Thursday night. This reduces the likelihood of last minute changes. Of course, you don’t want that list of judges to be a surprise 24 hours before the tournament, so make sure that you have the list of judges public at least a week before the tournament starts.