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Tournaments must be submitted to the ACT Ratings Officer (with effect from 2005 that's me) on Swiss Perfect files. If your tournament was paired by hand or other software it should be typed into SP afterwards. Any club affiliated to ACTCA (or any other State association) is entitled to a free SP licence.
The single most important piece of information to include about each player, apart from their results, is the player's ACF number which should be entered in the Local ID field on the Add Player screen. The best way to enter this data is to set up your tournament by using SP's Import facility rather than typing in the names from scratch - after a bit of practice you will find that importing is quicker and more accurate than typing since importing also pulls in the player's rating.
The process of importing is simple and can be self-taught with minimal practice, or to make it even easier Brian Jones of Australian Chess Enterprises has written a tutorial available here. Players are imported from a file called acfmast.trn which is generally located on the same directory as Swiss Perfect, though you can change the identity of the source with Import Options. The latest version of the file can be downloaded each quarter from the ACF Ratings page.
When importing players make sure that the import settings, which you can adjust before you start, include loading the fields LOC_ID and LOC_RTG for local ID and rating respectively.
The Tournament Options screen should have the tournament name in the obvious place. In the Organiser field enter the following
The page should look something like this:
To submit the tournament for rating you need to send three files which will have extensions of .trn, .sco and .ini to the ratings officer at ACTratings@yahoo.com. The purpose of this address is so that people don't need to remember who is the ratings officer and to minimise the risk of mail getting lost in the flood. You can also contact me at home or work, however the virus checker at work eats .ini files so don't send SP files there.
A tournament can be rated on the Normal rating list if
A game faster than Rapid, for instance all moves in five minutes, is not eligible to be rated.
If you are planning anything exotic that doesn't obviously fit into the above then contact the ratings officer for advice first. Or better, don't plan anything more exotic, there are enough different time controls around already.
In addition to the requirements on speed a game must be played in accordance with the Laws of Chess (or rapid rules for the Rapid list). Thus chess variants (such as shuffle/"Fischer" rules and transfer), handicap/odds games, consultation games, "thematic" (compulsory opening) tournaments, simultaneous exhibitions, computer-assisted or correspondence games are not rateable.
However games played remotely by normal rules (for instance the Dorothy Dibley Shield) can be rated at the discretion of the ACF Ratings Officer. Team tournaments, provided they consist of games which of themselves meet the requirements (not, for instance, with a consultation element), can also be rated.
Where a new player (someone not currently on the master list) turns up, it would be helpful if organisers could complete the fields Sex and Date of Birth on the New Player screen. If the name is reasonably common a middle initial could also be added.
If the player's date of birth is unknown but the player is obviously a junior please mention this when submitting results.
The information is collected for two reasons - for the generation of top lists (best women, best by age group etc), and to assist in identifying whether a player is somebody already on the list or is a new player.
Rating lists appear at three-monthly intervals with initial deadlines for submission a month prior. The schedule is as follows:
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| List issued | Deadline | |
| 1st March | 31st January | |
| 1st June | 30th April | |
| 1st September | 31st July | |
| 1st December | 31st October |
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However if a tournament finishes in the month after the deadline but before the date of the list the ratings officers will often attempt to get it on the list. Note that inclusion of such tournaments is not guaranteed, and their inclusion is designed to maximise the usefulness of the system and is not an extension of the deadline for tournaments already concluded. Processing can be expedited by notifying the ratings officer in advance of tournaments due to finish in the post-deadline period, advising of new players in the tournament if possible, and submitting the SP files at the earliest opportunity.
Tournaments which should have been rated in a period and for some reason are not submitted can generally be submitted for the following list; after that the results may be regarded as stale and more likely to cause rather than correct anomalies. In any case organiers should, in fairness to players, get results in as quickly as possible.
1. ACF charges ACTCA a levy (approximately 25 cents per player per game - note that this page may not necessarily be updated for changes in this so for budgetary purposes you should if in doubt contact ACTCA or ACF). This will be passed on to organisers.
2. It is ACTCA policy that players be members of ACTCA in order to have games submitted for rating, or alternatively pay an additional fee. The ratings officer will not reject games because a player has not yet caught up with joining, which would be unduly harsh. However it is assumed that organisers submitting games for rating are aware of and accept this requirement, and undertsand that the ACT Treasurer may be contacting them at some point.
3. Only games played at the board are rated. Forfeits and byes, while counting to the tournament score, are not rated. It is important that forfeits are correctly entered in SP (for instance +:-, not 1:0). Include an explanatory note if unsure whether a game is correctly entered.
4. Provided the above requirements, such as rules, time controls, ACTCA membership and payment of the rating fee are met, games do not have to be played in clubs or weekenders to be rated; private tournaments may be accepted. "May" does not mean "must" and such games may be rejected if there is doubt as to their legitimacy.
5. Sometimes clubs organise one-off games in conjunction with a tournament, for example to give a game to somebody with a bye or to a player who cannot attend regularly, which they wish to have rated. This can be achieved either by inclucing the games in the SP files or setting up a separate "tournament" for the rated games, provided that the games are not entered to show the same player apparently playing twice in the same round - this is detected as an error in the rating program.
6. It is not possible to calculate your next rating with certainty but there is a useful facility on Barry Cox's page (see links in left-hand strip) which will generally give a good approximation.
The following tournaments have been received for the next rating list.
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2007 Doeberl Cup Premier 2007 Doeberl Cup Major 2007 Doeberl Cup Minor 2007 Doeberl Cup Senior 2007 Woden Cup 2007 Belconnen Open 2007 Canberra CC Championship 2007 Autumn Junior Weekender 2007 Autumn Junior Weekender Reserves 2007 Canberra Cup 2007 ANU Fall Tournament 2007 Tuggeranong CC Championship
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2007 Vikings Allegro 2007 Girls' Allegro 2007 Girls' Secondary Championship 2006 Norths Term 4 Rapid 2007 Norths Term 1 Rapid 2007 Souths Term 1 Rapid 2007 Curtin Primary Term 1 2007 ANU Autumn Rapid Street Chess (several dates)
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Updated 1 June 2007