23-11-2012, 04:58 PM
Indeed arbiters are best placed.
My reasoning was that in congresses where draw is done manually you get a card for each player that gives their total score, opponents, colours, players number etc. If you put an indication of opt out there then at a glance when arbiters do draw they can see top 4 boards where both players want to play on digital boards and can then simply switch boards so traditional "Board 1" match is played on Board 5 and on Board 1 you put highest board number where all people want to play on boards. Admittedly that extra step could take a couple of minutes in each round that in a 5 round congress would be 10min per event that for a 4 event congress could add 40minutes onto workload spread out over 5 rounds
Trickier situation is when draws are made by a computer. Ideally if you had access to code all you would need to do is to add an opt out variable and then have computer populate boards as per description above. Unfortunately it's quite likely that source code isn't readily distributable so two options available are either the inelegant solution of scoring out and rewriting board numbers or alternatively writing a small program that takes data exported from program that makes draw to reorganise it according to digital board preference.
I will admit that it is probably easier for arbiters either to have no digital boards at all or force players to play on them whether they like it or not, although looking at problem and since original post did mention there being no real procedure in place I figured solution above is probably only theoretically feasible compromise. As far as getting chess out goes I'm more conservative so rather than newfangled inventions I figure education is way to go about it.
P.S. As far as digital boards go I often find their location is a bit inaccessible at least to general public. Would it not make sense to for example have a very prominant link on chessscotland website whenever any congresses have live boards. For example something like <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.theweekinchess.com/live">http://www.theweekinchess.com/live</a><!-- m --> or <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://teamleague.org/index.php">http://teamleague.org/index.php</a><!-- m --> could be a couple of examples to look at with maybe even permanant hosting of all previous games played on them so anyone looking can also look up past events although hosting might be an issue although usually pgns are quite small
My reasoning was that in congresses where draw is done manually you get a card for each player that gives their total score, opponents, colours, players number etc. If you put an indication of opt out there then at a glance when arbiters do draw they can see top 4 boards where both players want to play on digital boards and can then simply switch boards so traditional "Board 1" match is played on Board 5 and on Board 1 you put highest board number where all people want to play on boards. Admittedly that extra step could take a couple of minutes in each round that in a 5 round congress would be 10min per event that for a 4 event congress could add 40minutes onto workload spread out over 5 rounds
Trickier situation is when draws are made by a computer. Ideally if you had access to code all you would need to do is to add an opt out variable and then have computer populate boards as per description above. Unfortunately it's quite likely that source code isn't readily distributable so two options available are either the inelegant solution of scoring out and rewriting board numbers or alternatively writing a small program that takes data exported from program that makes draw to reorganise it according to digital board preference.
I will admit that it is probably easier for arbiters either to have no digital boards at all or force players to play on them whether they like it or not, although looking at problem and since original post did mention there being no real procedure in place I figured solution above is probably only theoretically feasible compromise. As far as getting chess out goes I'm more conservative so rather than newfangled inventions I figure education is way to go about it.
P.S. As far as digital boards go I often find their location is a bit inaccessible at least to general public. Would it not make sense to for example have a very prominant link on chessscotland website whenever any congresses have live boards. For example something like <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.theweekinchess.com/live">http://www.theweekinchess.com/live</a><!-- m --> or <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://teamleague.org/index.php">http://teamleague.org/index.php</a><!-- m --> could be a couple of examples to look at with maybe even permanant hosting of all previous games played on them so anyone looking can also look up past events although hosting might be an issue although usually pgns are quite small