How To: Make a "Hit List"

A "hit list" is TD slang for a list of players who need to contact the tournament staff, usually about a membership or payment issue. If you're running a small tournament, you'll probably just contact the players directly, so this is more of a large tournament issue, other perhaps, than the use of WinTD to identify players with problems to resolve.

Listing Potential Problems

WinTD can help you identify players with either of two problems: a missing or expired ID, or an incompletely paid account. The former is identified by examining the ID and Expiration fields in the player's record, and the second by the "Fee Paid" field. Note that, with regard to payments, WinTD can only help you keep track of whether a player owes money or not. The reason and precise amount will have to be recorded elsewhere.

To create a list of players who may have one of these problems, create a Player Window with the players in the section(s) you wish to process. Do Edit>Change Layout or hit the Change Layout icon (). In the Change Layout dialog box, go to the Show list box in the top right. To list the players with membership problems, choose "Non-Member." To show those with payment issues, choose "Not Paid." To list players with either of the two, choose "Problems." When you click OK, the player window will show only the players with the problems you requested.

Maintaining the List

Inevitably, some of the players will have already taken care of matters. To take players off the list, do the following:

•For players who have purchased, or renewed, memberships, select the player(s) and use Players>Make Membership Current. For players who already have ID's, this will update the expiration date to a year from now. For players who don't, WinTD will insert an affiliate ID in the ID field and set the expiration date to a year from now. This will be your affiliate ID if WinTD knows what it is, or a fictitious ID otherwise. In either case, this "ID" won't show up in any printed reports (though you will see it in on the player dialog box), but will satisfy WinTD's test for whether the player has a membership.

•For players who have, in fact, paid their fees, double click on the player's line and check the "Fee Paid" box in the Tournament Info tab of the Add/Edit a Player dialog box. Or, if you have several players to fix, select them and do Edit>Change Common Info. In the Change Common Info dialog box, click the "Set" box for "Fee Paid." (If a player needs to be added to the hit list, either uncheck "Fee Paid" or, in the Change Common Dialog, click the "Clear" box for "Fee Paid."

Notifying the Players

What you do here is going to depend a great deal upon the size of the tournament, and the number of staff members available. For a small enough tournament, you would probably just talk to the players directly, so we're assuming that the tournament is big enough that that technique would be infeasible. Many organizers start out by posting a printed copy of the list that you've just made near either the pairing sheets or the wall charts. This, combined with an announcement to the players (and coaches for scholastic tournaments) to check the list will often result in many of the problem cases being dealt with early in the tournament. If that doesn't work, there are a number of other more aggressive techniques to get the players' attention:

•The embarrassment method. This can be done by changing the name field for the player to Jones, John (SEE TD) or something like that. That will show up on the wall charts and pairing sheets until the player responds. Somewhat less aggressive is to have WinTD tag the hit list players (that's defined as any player with either type of problem) on the pairing sheets. This is done with the "Tag Action List" check box in the Pairing Sheet (by boards) section of the preferences. This puts a * in the information field after a player's name. Use a highlighter on those players' names to call this to their attention.

•The mail merge action letter. This requires some combination of programs which can work together to handle a mail merge. It's been used at a number of large national events. The recommended technique is to take the list that you've prepared, and add the "Board" field to it using Edit>Change Layout. (The "Board" field is quite a ways down on the scrolling list of available fields). The Board field shows the board number and color to which the player was assigned the last time his section was paired. You might also include the ID and expiration fields if your interest is in resolving membership issues. Do Edit>Copy and then paste into a spreadsheet program like Excel. Using a compatible word processor with mail merge capabilities, create a letter with merge fields which explains what action is requested of the player. Merge them and print. If you include the board information on the letter, you can easily locate the players. To simplify that process, you might want to sort the spreadsheet by the board field, so you the merged letters will be in order.