One of the main tasks you encounter when running a tournament is keeping track of players. If you run scholastic tournaments, you may also need to keep track of teams. WinTD provides considerable flexibility in handling players and teams, as described below. When you're ready to continue, see Setting Up and Running a Tournament for instructions on running a tournament.
Entering Player Information
WinTD provides two ways to store player information:
- You can store player information in master player files. This is often the best choice if you have players who will be entering more than one of your tournaments. You will only need to enter detailed information once for each player. When one of these players enters a tournament, you can add her into the tournament file with just a few keystrokes or mouse clicks. See How To: Add/Edit Players in Master Player Fileand How To: Manage a Master Filefor more information.
- You can also enter new players directly into individual tournament files. This is usually more convenient when you have players that are not likely to appear in more than one tournament. See How To: Add Players to a Tournament for details.
Note that you don't have to use either method exclusively. For a particular tournament, you might enter new players directly into the tournament file, and drag and drop other players in from a master list file. If you do enter players directly into a tournament file, you also have the option of copying those players to a master file for use in later tournaments.
If you download the USCF database, you can easily add players from it to your tournament or master files and you can have WinTD automatically update information on your players database. See USCF database for details.
Using Teams
The word "Team" is used in two different contexts in WinTD:
A "team tournament" is a tournament (actually, a section) where teams play matches against each other. The pairings are done based upon the results of the team versus team matches. Examples are the US Amateur Teams and Pan-Am Intercollegiate. Many high school tournaments are done in this format as well.
If, however, the players are paired and scored as individuals, and team awards are based upon the highest individual scores, then you have what WinTD (and the USCF) call a "combined" tournament. The best example of this is the USCF scholastic championships. Most local scholastic tournaments below the high school level are also combined tournaments.
WinTD allows you (using the Master(Team) menu) to create and maintain "team" files for use with the combined tournament format. If you are going to be using teams in this manner, we recommend that you enter the team names into a team list file before you begin entering player information. This makes it easy for you to include the team name for each player as you add him to the tournament or master file. If you set up the teams after entering player information, you will need to go back and set the team for each player you've entered.
For true team tournaments, teams are entered as "players" in a teams section, so there is no real point in using team files. See Team Tournaments for further details on both combined and team tournaments.
Next:Setting Up and Running a Tournament