I’m running a league that follows the FSPA rule set. We play 4 games each week and have 6 groups. As it stands right now, each group plays one game on each machine. I use the PAPA software, have the first 3 groups pick a machine based on the rules and then manually set group 5 and 6 to follow group 3 and 4. It turns out to be quicker that way, since group 1 & 2 can run long games.
We’ve never had more than 4 machines, so things worked out since we played 4 games.
With that said, the operator just dropped off another machine, so I now have 5 games. I’m wondering how that is supposed to work?
Do all 6 groups have to play the same games? Meaning that group 1 - 4 selects the machines and then groups 5 & 6 have to play the same selected machine?
We always have the first game be random, then the loser picks after that. We don’t have the whole league play the same games unless we only have X amount of games to play.
Nope, all groups do not have to play the same machines, nor do groups have to play all machines at the location. Having more machines is a wonderful thing: less waiting between games, the game #1 machine choice is more interesting, and players don’t get quite so tired of playing the exact same games week after week. The more machines the merrier!
As for how to do it: the FSPA rules describe that the player who won their group in the previous meet and has now moved up to a higher group gets to pick game #1 for their group, and the remaining games are chosen “according to a well-defined scheme”. It’s left to the league official to select that scheme, but since you’re using the League Manager software, it offers a solution: after each group has selected their game #1, open up the scoresheet in League Manager, fill out the game #1 choices on the site, then click the “Shuffle Machines” button. It will ask you to confirm that all machines are available (e.g. at this point you could exclude a machine that is broken on this particular evening), then click Shuffle to proceed. Voila, all machines for all groups will be filled out, avoiding (as much as possible) having any group play the same machine twice or having the same machine used by different groups in the same round. In your case, with 6 groups and 5 machines, two groups will wind up with the same schedule.
Copy the machine assignments onto the paper scoresheets and send players on their way. This also has the advantage that the machine choices are already selected in the software, so you don’t have to do that when you’re entering scores later. Also, some leagues are super-ambitious and bring a portable printer to the league location, and print the scoresheets with machine selections on the spot, which saves the tedium of hand-copying the machine assignments onto the paper sheets.
So I’ll alter your question to discuss “the 6th group to choose”, not necessarily group #6. FSPA’s rules actually recommend rotating down the initial machine choice each week… so by the book, week 1 is random (no one gets a choice), week 2 the order is 1-2-3-4-5-6, week 3 the order would be 2-3-4-5-6-1, week 4 would be 3-4-5-6-1-2, etc. This ensures that all groups have a shot at an early machine pick, since the later machine picks kinda suck in a situation like yours.
To that point, one variation you can try is allowing a duplicate machine to be chosen once while cycling through the machine picks. With 6 groups and 5 machines, you know it’s gotta happen somewhere. With this variation, maybe the 6th group to choose is stuck with choosing the lone remaining machine, or maybe they’re able to pick anything, just depends on what earlier groups did.
Does anyone know how to change the date on the FSPA scoresheets? We skipped last week because of the holiday, but the software wants to keep using the 23rd. I tried editing the date, but it wants to keep defaulting back to last week.
Sorry, I missed this question when it was posted… there’s no magic to changing the date, just put in a new date in the Date field when editing the scoresheet. Ok, actually, there’s a little magic: make sure you use same format shown in the field (YYYY-MM-DD) … most browsers pop up a calendar control that helps with this. Using a different format like MM-DD-YYYY gets silently discarded, which I should probably improve.
FSPA’s rules actually recommend rotating down the initial machine choice each week… so by the book, week 1 is random (no one gets a choice), week 2 the order is 1-2-3-4-5-6, week 3 the order would be 2-3-4-5-6-1, week 4 would be 3-4-5-6-1-2, etc. This ensures that all groups have a shot at an early machine pick, since the later machine picks kinda suck in a situation like yours.