Addendum 5 Web Updates and Supplements

Two of the most important areas for notifying our members, TDs, and organizers about published and current ratings are dealt with by this module. This is almost completely a report module. In order for you to understand what is needed, you should review the following descriptions. Some of the reports are specified as an HTML coded output. I do not know if Access has this capability or not. The programmer should specific if they have not included this capability because it is not supported.

Definitions

Published Rating - Every two months, we publish our rating supplement. The rating published in these issues is the "Published Rating" or also known as an "official rating." The published ratings are also listed on the label of each Chess Life. These ratings are important to our members and used by our organizers / TDs for prize eligibility and pairing purposes.

Current Rating - the "current rating" is the rating kept in the USCF database that is the result of the last tournament rated. The current rating is kept internally in our computer and is used as the pre-event rating for the next event to be rated.

Rating Supplement - A magazine published every two months and mailed to all of our affiliates. The bulk of this magazine is the regular and quick rating lists. The Annual rating list is generated in early November of each year and contains a rating for every player who participated in a tournament rated since the previous annual list. Thereafter, 5 supplements are published to update the Annual List. The Feb., Apr., Aug., and Oct. supplements only contain ratings for players who had an event rated in the previous two months. The Jun. supplement has ratings from events over the previous 6 months. This magazine also has an Events Rated list, a Senior Master and Master list, and Top 50 lists which are generated at the same time as the rating lists.

Rating supplement on disk - a slightly modified copy of the rating lists published in the supplement. In the paper supplement, the quick and regular ratings are separate lists. The RS on disk is a .dbf file with a record for each player and fields for ID number, state, exp. date, regular rating, and quick rating. Although we intend to expand the information provided and probably change the file type, for the next few years we will have to continue to provide the current file. This file is also uploaded to our web site to update the last published rating figure.

Weekly Update - The USCF has a web-site http://www.uschess.org with a link to a search engine http://www.64.com/cgi-bin/ratings.pl that allows a player or organizer to look up their rating. In addition to being able to view their entire published rating history since 1992, each week, the changed ratings for players who had an event rated that week is uploaded to update the web-site database. Additionally, membership changes and additions are also provided. This is accomplished by generating two files each week after the rate is run. As the files are uploaded, the web-site will also display a history of each weekly update since the last published update.

Main Functions

Web-update -

Current Program = M:\pgms\uploadfl.bat

This program creates two files used to update the web-site. The program is run after the rate, create crosstables, and update Cobol programs have finished running. Although the output files will be changed in the future, there is no need for a change at this time unless it would make it significantly easier for the program to be written.

A few new file producing reports will have to be written.

The first new report needed is the Weekly Events Rated List. This will generate the weekly events rated list for upload to the web. It should include every section rated in the specified weekly rate. The output can be an Access file with the following fields. An option to include events received but not rated should be included. This option would only include those that were received since a specified date. The screen that generates the report should allow two fields each to select a range of dates. The computer should provide a default range based on the last time the program was run and the current date. The first set of dates would be the date rated to select the sections just rated. If the last time the program was run it uploaded the events rated on 10/13/99, It should set a default of From = 10/14/99 to the current date. If the "include received but not rated" option is selected, the same process should be used for selection of the date received field.

Field Description	Comments
Event ID number
Event name
Section name
Section number
Of sections	Number of sections in the event.
System and K field	A three character field displaying the system and K separated by a space or dash. R-F, R-H, or Q-Q
Date received
Date rated
Affiliate ID #
TD ID #
Number of players
Number of rounds
Event State

A second new file that will be needed for updating our web-site is the Current TD file. This will be produced on a weekly basis and should provide the following fields. Again, the selection screen should allow the selection of all TDs, or based on a range of certification expiration or last changed dates. Please check the TD maintenance module to insure that it supports a last changed date for the TD information.

Field	Comments
ID number
Title
Last name
First name
Suffix
TD level	Type of TD C, L, S, U, N
IA	Y, N, null
Certification Exp. Date
State
Zip code

The following are files currently produced. I suspect that it will be easy to update our current upload function to use Access files rather then the dbase files so the programmer should have it create .mdb files

Current members file - The current program selects all records with a date last changed since the last output and the current date and creates a new file with the following fields. The actual field names used in our current database is available if needed. As in previous files, a screen allowing a range of dates based on the appropriate last changed date for membership data is needed.

	Field description	Type	width
1	ID#	Char.	8
2	Title	Char.	5
3	Last name	Char.	30
4	First name	Char.	20
5	Suffix	Char.	3
6	Address 1	Char.	30
7	Address 2	Char.	30
8	City	Char.	20
9	State	Char.	2
10	Zip	Char.	10
11	County code	Char.	3
12	Country	Char.	21
13	Phone	Char.	10
14	Sex	Char.	1
15	Previous membership type	Char.	1
16	Current membership type	Char.	1
17	Birth Date	Date	8
18	Membership exp. Date	Date	8
19	Last changed Date	Date	8
20	Affiliate or TD	Char.	1

The Current Ratings file has much of the same information and the records selected are also only those changed since the last time the Uploadfl program was run. Again, a screen allowing the operator to specify a range of dates bases on the last date the ratings information was changed is needed.

	Field description	Type	width
1	ID#	Char.	8
2	Last name	Char.	30
3	First name	Char.	20
4	Expiration date	Char.	8
5	Regular Player type	Char.	1
6	Regular Provisional game count	Char.	2
7	Regular Norm 1	Char.	1
8	Regular Norm title	Char.	1
9	Regular Current rating	Char.	4
10	Regular Last published rating	Char.	4
11	Quick Player type	Char.	1
12	Quick Provisional game count	Char.	2
13	Quick Norm 1	Char.	1
14	Quick Norm title	Char.	1
15	Quick Current rating	Char.	4
16	Quick Last published rating	Char.	4
17	Postal Player type	Char.	1
18	Postal game count	Char.	4
19	Postal current rating	Char.	4
20	Last tournament 1	Char.	11
21	Last tournament 2	Char.	11
22	Last tournament 3	Char.	11
23	Last tournament 4	Char.	11
24	Last tournament 5	Char.	11
25	State	Char.	2

Supplement files

Every two months, CFRATSYS is used to create the ratesupp.pnt file with the necessary rating information for our supplements. The information contained in this file is:

Rated Events list - a two month list as opposed to the weekly list being created by the weekly web update programs. This list always includes only the events rated since the last supplement and basically covers a two month period. This list is sorted first by state and then by ending date except that at the beginning of the list we list our National events and foreign events. As our event file structure does not allow us to identify which events are national, at the start of the program, we designate which events are national. Another problem here is that the country field is used to select the events to go into the foreign listing. This is selected by searching and any event not USA is designated as foreign. The new program should also accept US as not foreign. The validation should place a watch on foreign events so we can easily correct errors. Only about 2-5 events a year are truly foreign.

Senior Masters List - an alpha list of all the players who qualify for this supplement whose rating is => 2400

Masters List - an alpha list of all the players who qualify for this supplement whose rating is => 2200 and less than 2400.

Regular Rating List - an alpha list of all the players who have played in an event rated over the appropriate period in the regular system. The Annual December List includes all players who had an event rated in the regular system since the last annual list was produced (a one-year window). The June list also includes all who had an event rated in the regular system since the last annual list was produced ( a six-month window). The remaining 4 supplements only include those who played since the previous supplement ( a two-month window). An important thing to note is that if a player has the requisite activity but only in the other system, they should not be listed in the the first list. The information output is name, ID number, membership expiration date, State, and rating. A provisionally rated player will have a rating output formatted as Rating / # games rrrr/gg where rrrr is their regular rating.

Quick Rating List - Exactly the same as the regular list but only includes those who had the necessary quick activity and lists only the quick rating.

The current file is a space delimited text file for all the areas. The rating and senior and master lists are given to our publications department for formatting and creation of header information in the Quark page layout program. I take the Events Rated list and create a word document in table format before giving it to publications for entry into Quark. I have to manually format as bold all the state names. Once formatted, this file is also given to our web master for HTML coding and placement on our web-site. Reports need to be developed to automate this process and discussions should be held with our publications department for the best output format for easiest import into the Quark program. Examples of the formatted events rated list can be found at the USCF web-site www.uschess.org under ratings.

Top 50 Lists

Another set of programs are run to create our Top 50 Lists. This is a set of lists used mostly for promotional purposes. All of the lists appear on our web-site. 12 of the lists also appear in our rating supplement.

In order to make the lists stable, these lists do not follow the rules for the above items that appear in the supplement. The following rules apply for selecting those to appear on the lists. The current program produces a list of the top 65 and manual elimination of prison memberships and foreign FIDE Federation has to occur. This should not be necessary with the new programs. If more than one player ties for # 50, all tied individuals should be included. When generating the place number, all tied individuals should either be given the same place number of only the first and the remaining tied individuals should be left blank. This can be seen in the lists published on our web-site.

Rating - selected based on the last published rating. Note that this rating will not necessarily be the rating generated by the most recent supplement. Because they may not have played for 8 months as an example, the rating information may be from an earlier supplement. Only players with established ratings are included in the lists. Except for the quick and postal lists, only the regular ratings will be used.

Activity - must have played in a USCF rated even during the preceding 12 months. This is calculated by requesting the date for the last rate to be included and setting a range of that date minus 365 days.

Membership expiration date - must either be current or were current within the past 3 months from the date of the supplement. If the Oct. supplement is being created, the list should include those whose expiration date is July of the supplement year or later.

Membership type - only valid individual types should be included. Only the following should be included. B, E, J, L, Q, R, S, U, V, W, Z. Note that listed under R are prison members who should be excluded. These can be identified by the source code for the membership.

FIDE Federation - Include an option to restrict list to a FIDE federation of USA or non-restricted. Default should be USA.

Age - Age based lists should be based on the age as of the 1^st of the month prior to supplement date. For the December list, the ages should be calculated as of 11/1/99.

Any member with no birth-date information will be excluded from all age based lists. Any member with no gender information will be excluded from gender based lists.

Top 50 overall.

Top 50 senior - age =>65.

Top 50 Women - gender is F.

Top 50 Quick - overall based on quick rating.

Top 50 Correspondence - overall based on postal rating.

Top 50 Under 21

Top 50 Under 16

Top 50 Under 13

Top 50 women under 16

Top 50 women under 13

Ages under 8, and in ranges 9-10, 11-12, 13-14, 15-16, 17-18

The reports should include Name, age if applicable, state and rating. The output should be separate files formatted both for HTML coded placement on the web-site and entry into the Quark program.

Qualification List Generator - One of the original purposes of the Top 50 lists was to generate a qualification list for our invitational tournaments based on rating. A report to allow this to be done as necessary also needs to be created. Very flexible selection criteria needs to be allowed. At a minimum, the following need to be allowed for. The Top 50 lists requested above could be a sub-set of this module with pre-formatted selection criteria.

1. Number of players to include on list.

2. Rating system.

3. Age - range as of a specified date.

4. Gender.

5. FIDE Federation - default is USA.

6. Membership expiration - current since ?

7. Activity - range based on ending date.

8. Activity - range based on rated date.

9. # of games since ?- a dual field where a number of games and a date range for ending date. Only players meeting or exceeding the specified number of games within the range will be included. It is important that only games from the specified rating system be included.

10. Include games from a specified event - will add games from a specified event to the count of # of games from above even if the specified event is outside the date range. Event will be by event ID.

11. Calculations - some of our events include the following criteria.

a. Peak published rating over a date range (date rated or date ended)

b. Peak rating over a date range (date rated or date ended). Note that this is not published and the crosstable files need to be searched for this value.

c. Peak FIDE rating from rating list range ( Generated every 6 months.)

d. current published rating

e. Current FIDE rating (most recent list in specified date range)

A combination of the average of some or all of the above ratings is finally used to provide this list. Documentation of the required calculations for current events will be provided by Glenn Petersen or Beatriz Marinello. As published and current ratings are reasonable indicators of a players strength, an efficient method of doing this search would be to use current and published ratings to generate a list of the top 150 ( or 15 * requested number) in the specified gender/age/membership exp./FIDE federation categories and then to do the complete search and calculation based on the selected IDs.

The summary output should list the selected players in descending order and show the ratings upon which the calculations were done. A detailed report that documents each player, which supplement or event from which the rating was selected, and any additional information felt useful should also be generated.