Register - Players Menu
This gives you access to the main registration dialog. The dialog consists of four tabs. The main registration tab is always on the left.
The other three will either be together on the far right (if you have the “Wide view” option checked), or right next to the registration tab.
Using wide view is usually best unless your screen is small. In wide view, you can see the registration information as well as the sources you can use for importation all at the same time.
The registration tab consists of the many fields you can keep track of for your players. The other tabs offer alternatives to typing in all this information by hand.
You may search a database you have previously set up, you may search the USCF website (if you have an Internet connection), or you may search a customized club list of players that you created.
Each of these search methods has its own tab.
When you first enter this dialog for a section, SwissSys presents you with a dialog of ratings search options. This lets you tell SwissSys what ratings to load when searching online or with a database, what to do in the case of missing ratings, and more.
These options may be also set at any time from the Environment Options dialog (Ratings tab). To register players manually, just enter whatever information on a player you want to in the fields provided in the registration tab. To the right is a roster list that is updated as you enter players. Just above this is a section box that allows you to switch easily between sections while you register players. See Section Box for details on this. If you have not yet declared what ratings this section will use, SwissSys prompts you for rating information.
This is to ensure the proper rating is loaded when you do searches. For more specific control over rating searches (for instance, to load online ratings from the USCF website rather than over-the-board ratings), click on the R-Rating options button.
There is also a submenu running along the top of the registration dialog that lets you control certain aspects of the registration dialog. Some of these menu commands are identical to the button pushes described below, and should require no special explanation, but a few others are unique.
These include the following:
Edit | Copy last player — This option allows you to load the edit boxes with information on the last-entered player.
This is an easy way to enter a player in more than one section.
Import | Set default data source — Instead of opening one of the search tabs to find players, you may enter a player name or ID and then hit Enter.
Whichever data source is your default will then be searched for a match. If a unique match is found, the player data will be loaded into the registration fields for inspection or further editing.
Options | Use Enter key for — This tells SwissSys how to respond when you hit the enter key. “Tab” makes it tab to the next field; “Load” makes it load the currently-identified player from the default data source (database, online, or club list); “Scan mode” works the same as “Load”, but it also registers the player immediately.
Tools — This gives you access to several helpful features and lets you tweak the way SwissSys responds to your commands during registration.
See the topic Registration tools for more details.
If you are running a fixed-roster team tournament, you may want to use the Team Registration option (the button labeled with a red “T”). This lets you register basic information on all the players on a team at once.
The buttons on the top of the registration dialog allow you to accept a player entry, cancel, undo your last-entered editing, clear all the edit boxes, or load player data from a search.
See the topic Importing players for an overview of how you can use SwissSys to search your player lists and register players automatically.
Registration Fields
The purpose of the various registration edit fields should be obvious in most cases. A few points to note are the following:
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Use last-name-first format when entering a player’s name. You can print names in normal order by setting the “Print first name first” option in the listings options dialog (the “print and other options” tab), but do register them last-name-first.
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For ratings, enter 0 for unrated players, type “unr.”, or just leave the field blank. Entering a negative number gives a player an estimated rating.
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You can have SwissSys warn you if you try to accept a player with an expired membership. Set this from the Options submenu. You can also have SwissSys automatically load a player into the correct section based on the player’s rating or age/grade field.
These are in the Environment options dialog, and are referred to there as the “Ratings registration rule” and the “Age/grade registration rule.” For these rules to work, you must declare the acceptable range of values when you set up the sections of your tournament.
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The player title (GM, IM, His Royal Highness, or whatever), will be added to the player’s name in printouts. It can either come before or after the name. (See Format options | Print and other options)
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Use the “Fees” fields to enter up to three kinds of payment, categorized however you like. You can inspect these fields (and the totals) from the Reports menu.
The names of these fields can be customized to make it easier to remember which is which.
Do this from the Environment Options dialog.
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The team, club/federation, city, state and zip fields can do double-duty when it comes to pairings. These fields can act as markers to prevent SwissSys from pairing two players with the same values in any of those fields. See Rules for pairing for more details.
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Lifetime memberships can be entered either as “99/99/99”, “99/99”, “12/31/2099”, or simply “life”.
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To enter byes, click on the buttons representing the rounds the player will get the byes (either in the half point or zero point button columns numbered from 1 to 14).
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To delete a player from this dialog, select the player in the roster and do a right-mouse click to bring up the pop-up menu that includes this option.