Team Tournaments

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. WinTD includes a number of special features for handling this type of tournament. It can also handle "board-weighted" team tournaments, which are identical to team tournaments except that different boards are assigned different weights (for instance, the top board in a match can be assigned a higher weight than the bottom board).

WinTD can also handle what we (and the US Chess) call "combined" tournaments. This is where players are paired as individuals, and team awards are based upon the highest individual scores. The best example of this is the US Chess scholastic championships. Most local scholastic tournaments below the high school level are also combined tournaments. Special properties of these are described below.

Use the Section Type pull down in the Add/Edit a Section dialog box to indicate whether a particular section is to be an individual, combined, team, or board-weighted team section. Note that a single tournament file can contain a mix of individual, combined, and team sections.

Team vs Team Tournaments

WinTD can handle team tournaments with any fixed number of boards. It will allow any number of alternates on a team. You can also mix team sections and individual sections in a single tournament, if, for instance, you run an individual section for the "JV" players. The Section Type box in the Add/Edit a Section dialog box is chosen to be either "Team vs Team" (which would weight boards equally) or "Board-Weighted Team" (which weights boards differently). Set the Boards per Team text box to the number of boards played in a match.

There are a few basic points that will help you to understand how WinTD processes team sections:

•"Teams" are, for most purposes, treated just like individuals in other types of sections. You edit their information with the Add/Edit a Player dialog box.

•The lineup for a team is kept only within a tournament file. You can put both the "team" and individuals on a (single) master file, but you will need to remake the lineup for each tournament. You can, however, drag and drop between tournaments if you want to keep an old lineup intact.

•The individual games within a team versus team match can be accessed only through a special dialog box. This helps ensure that the match scores are always computed properly. However, you can use the Quick Entry Keys method to enter the result of the overall match in the Games Window, and then later go back and enter the results of the individual games.

•For a board-weighted team section, use the Board Weights and Colors on the Team v Team tab in the Add/Edit a Section dialog to set the weight and color rotation for each board. The weight specifies the number of points awarded for a win on that board, half that in case of a draw. For example, if teams have five boards with the weights 10.0, 9.0, 8.0, 7.0, and 6.0, a win on board one is worth 10.0, while a draw is 5.0. A win on board two would be worth 9.0, and so on. The team with the highest point total wins the match (matches are always worth one point for a win or a half point for a draw).

•In a typical team vs team tournament, color assignment isn't as important as in an individual tournament, since if there are an even number of boards, the team as a whole will have an equal number of each color. If you want to downgrade the importance of color in determining pairings, you can by using the options on the Team Colors tab of the Pair a Round dialog box.

Scores in team tournaments are usually entered on special result forms which include all the games in a match. These are created by using the Reports>Print Team Results Sheets operation on a game window for the section.

For further help on running team tournaments, see:

How To: Create a Team Tournament Section

How To: Add Teams to a Team Section

How To: Add Players to a Team

How To: Enter Scores in Team Sections

How To: List Individuals in a Team Section

How To: Use Master Files for Team Tournaments

How To: Change Board Orders of a Team

How To: Use Seedings not Ratings

Combined (Team/Individual) Tournaments

In a combined tournament, players are paired as individuals and compete for individual prizes. Team standings are based on the performance of the individual team members. To run a combined tournament, you just need to make sure that

1.You select the "Individual/Team" choice in the Section Type box of the Add/Edit a Section dialog box.

2.You enter Team Code's for each player who is to be counted as a member of a team.

You then run the tournament normally—pairing rounds and entering individual game results as for an ordinary individual tournament. The only change from normal pairing procedures is that you can control how the pairing of teammates will be handled. See Pairing System: Teams and Clubs.

To check team standings during or at the end of the tournament, do the Reports>Show Team Standings operation.

For general information on setting Team Codes, see Add/Edit a Player dialog box, Team Files, and Team Windows. We do recommend that you use a team file and set that up before you start adding new players, as this will make it easier to assign Team Codes to new players. Note that you can also use the Edit>Change Common Info... to quickly assign a Team Code to a group of existing players.