Cascadia Open 2017 lessons learned - UEWBot/dipvis GitHub Wiki

The software finally made its debut at a tournament!

It was generally well received. I had several positive comments on having the information available to all, and no negative comments. I also didn't notice any negative effects as a result of using the software.

I ran with a TV visible to the players showing a 4-frame page with the three games and the overall score. On my laptop screen I had five tabs open - one for each of the three current games, to upload SC counts; one for the admin interface, to create draw votes; and one to upload images.

I took pictures of SC charts as well as board positions. This allowed me to upload data without taking the SC charts away from the boards. The SC chart images also helped in identifying which board image was for which phase.

I couldn't rely on the players to write the round and game number on the SC chart, which was vital for me.

I had to manually refresh frames on the TV at various times to ensure that the latest data was shown.

##Lessons Learned

• Don't try to capture images for every phase of every board. Probably worthwhile for a top board but would require much more manpower to cover an entire tournament.
• A central clock likely would work, and would avoid the problem of slower boards having more information than faster ones. Overall, it's probably a win.
• If you are capturing images, use labels on the board to help identify the round, game, and ideally phase.

##Rationale

• I put labels in the top left of each board to identify the round and game numbers. This was invaluable when sorting out the images. It could be expanded - a small white board on which the phase could be written, perhaps ? At some point it might interfere with the game itself.
• It does take effort. By myself, I was just about about to keep up with 3 boards per round, but that was including capturing images for every phase of every board (I did miss a lot due to camera problems and a few just due to timing).
• It would take a lot of manpower to capture images for every phase of every game and to upload them in real time. It's not always easy to figure out what phase a given image is for, even knowing the game. I suspect that it is really only worth doing for a top board.
• Cascadia Open ran without a central clock. My thought was that this would stagger the adjudication times for the boards, making it easier to capture the data. It was impossible to capture images anyway. The games running slower had a bit of an advantage in that they could see what was happening on other boards. If you were just going to capture SC counts, it would likely be easy enough with a central clock. Also, all the data could then be entered together and become available at once.

##Bugs I did find a number of bugs, which have been entered into the bug tracker. I had to use the admin interface to create draw votes. There are some images in the database that are wrongly identified. One player appears twice in the tournament.

##Enhancements I also entered some enhancement ideas into the bug tracker. With a central clock, it would be nice to be able to enter one year's SC counts for every game on one page. There were a couple of times when I entered SC counts for the wrong game - having player names displayed would help.