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Stratification – notes for EBU TDs - Gordon Rainsford 5 January 2016

It is now standard practice for EBU Swiss Pairs events to be stratified, unless they are the consolation part of a larger event from which some of the pairs

have qualified for a separate final (eg Autumn Congress, Seniors Congress).

Conversely, Swiss Teams are not often stratified unless they are in a congress that used to have a “B” flight, but where low numbers have rendered this

unfeasible (eg Spring Congress, Year End London).

If you are running a stratified event, you need to tick the appropriate check box in the “Masterpoints” tab of the “Event Details” page.

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Then “Set Master Point Scales” as follows:

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The top award value and the lowest award (in this case 8 green points & 2 green points) will have been set in advance and can be found in the event

programme. The “B” stratification awards are always half the “A” stratification awards, and the “C” stratification are half again. The percent of field given

the awards is always the same for each stratification, in this case 25%.

The match awards are also found in the event programme, but can be calculated by dividing the number of boards in a match by 29 and rounding to 2

decimal places. This means that for seven-board matches a win is 0.25 and a draw is 0.13 (a draw is worth half a win, rounded up), while for eight-board

matches a win is 0.28 and a draw is 0.14.

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Now the prize awards can be set by clicking the “Set Prizes” button in the “Event Details” page . Main prizes (“A” strat) are indicated first with a “P” (not an

“A”) followed by the others, in order of priority. You can now display stratified prizes on the ranking list, by letting the program copy across the “B” & “C”

strats into the “Category” column in the “Properties” page, marking “C” stratification pairs as “BC”, when you set the strats in the “Properties” page (see p9

below).

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Next access the “Player Database” from the “Plaeyr Names” page, and click on “Download EBU Member List” – assuming you are connected to the

internet. Answer “Yes” or “OK” to any questions you are asked at this stage.

We now usually work from the large database stored on Google Drive, as above. However, if more than one event is writing names at the same time, you

should use your own copy of the database. You can do this by copying the main one to another folder, or you can make your own small database by

reading a CSV file with the names of entrants and importing it into a blank “Player Database”, as follows:

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First ensure you are connected to a database other than the big one on Google Drive – selecting the one inside the scoring program folder should be fine.

Click on the “Player Management” tab, and click the button to “Read PlayerDB from CSV File”. Allow it to delete the current player database (which it will

automatically back up). This will give you a small and accurate database to work from, which will help you with the next stages. At the same time, check

that the stratification level ranks are set as below, and that “Set Strat Level by Rank” is selected. (You can ignore the NGS grades which are not used to

stratify our events other than the Really Easy Afternoons). You should usually tick “Non-Interactive” to avoid the need for clicking endless “OK” buttons.

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That completes the procedures that are best done before the event starts (though you can do them later if necessary). Now you should start your event in

the usual way: first of all click on the “Player Numbers” tab and tick “Add Visitors to Player Database”. Then go back to the “Results” tab, “Create

Database” and “Launch BSC”. Later, when you have checked and corrected all the names, you should come back here to the “Player Numbers” tab and

click the “Write Names to BCS” button”.

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Next go into the “Player Names” page, where you should find all your players’ names (type in any that are missing, and correct any errors). Any players

who had pre-entered and were in your CSV file, or who have correctly entered their EBU numbers into the Bridgemate, will show in blue (hopefully most of

them). Any that you have entered manually and were not in the CSV file (if you used one) will be in yellow. If you forgot to tick “Add Visitors to Player

Database”, you will find that players who were not in the CSV file will be in yellow even if they correctly entered their EBU numbers.

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Click on “Add Visitors to PlayerDB” and you will be asked to identify each new player from the EBU database. The names should then all show in blue, as

below.

Go back into the “Player Management” tab, via the “Player Names” page and the “Player Database” button, and click on “Set All Player EBU Details”.

Identifying all the missing players in this way sets their stratification Level, which you can confirm by going back into the “Player Database” tab, and

scrolling down the entries, seeing that there are various entries in the “Strat” box, corresponding to the players’ ranks (diagrams on p4 & p5 above).

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Once the individual players’ stratification levels have been set, you can go into the “Properties” page to “Calculate Strat Levels” for the partnerships, by

clicking the appropriate button. You will be asked if you want to copy strat levels to Category Flags. You should say “Yes” to this as it’s necessary for the

strat prizes to show up in the ranking list. Note that you can manually edit these strat, and may well need to in Swiss Teams events (see below).

Once you have done all of this, your ranking list should show the various rankings and master point awards according to stratification level. If you have any

trouble with this, check that you ticked the appropriate check box in the “Masterpoints” tab of the “Event Details” page, and that you selected “Ranks &

Masterpoints”, “Ranks & Stratified Awards” & “Ranks & Prizes/Qualifiers” on the “Reports” page.

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Swiss Teams

Although Swiss Teams stratification follows the same procedures as Swiss Pairs, the basis of stratification found in the programme is usually rather more

complicated. For this reason it is best to check it manually and adjust as necessary.

Once you have done everything as described above, and are in the “Properties” page having clicked “Calculate Strat Levels”, you should click “Print

Properties!. That will produce a list that you can print, with which to manually confirm the teams’ stratification levels. Any that need to be changed can be

done directly here in the “Properties” page.

Other than for this page, these notes have been illustrated with examples from the current version of EBUScoreSwissPairs. Other EBUScore programs follow

similar principles, but may have small differences of layout. They are all updated regularly so further differences of layout may develop over time.