Why forms? Everyone uses email.

Several parents suggested that I get more help (with administrative work). So I’m trying to create better systems where I can get help.

For example, with tournaments, I can have people help me prepare for tournaments by reviewing the online entries.

This can only be done with forms… it’s harder to do with emails.

If I have someone helping me with forms, it is very important that parents use the forms. For example: if you withdraw from a tournament without using the form.. the message might get lost. I might have someone else helping me with pre-entries.

Overall, the forms are a very important part of how Panda Chess Academy operates. 

The tough part about this job is I have to sometimes treat it like a business. So it seems weird.. since I will know the family well but I will have to ask they do what any “customer” does (such as fill out the form). Sometimes I ask parents to do this, yet I’ve been teaching their kids for 7 years. But it really helps me stay organized. It also gives me a centralized way for me to find all of the contact information.

Sportsmanship, Rules, and Parents

I appreciate the parents who come here. They are very nice to me, and every week I feel bad that I can't make the time to stop and talk to them because organizing tournaments requires a lot of attention. 

It is ok if parents make mistakes when entering tournaments. It happens all of the time, and there are no hard feelings. Parents are nice about it and they apologize. I try to offer a flexible option for the kid to make up for their missed tournament by attending a future tournament.

It is encouraging how parents are so nice. If chess parents weren't this kind, there wouldn't be as many chess professionals and chess volunteers.

I wish ALL parents would try their best to follow the rules. If there are 80 parents per week breaking the rules, then there is simply no hope for scholastic chess. If there is one parent breaking a rule, even just occasionally, it makes things worse for the other 79 families, but also it really just causes a lot of stress for the tournament staff. And then the staff has to spend more hours trying to figure out how to avoid these situations in the future. 

Recently, I was told that there might be an error in my tournament entry form system by a parent who appeared to have entered their child after the 10pm deadline. A parent told me that the player was definitely entered correctly, much earlier than the Thursday 10pm deadline. My logs showed that the entry came in after 10pm.

This is the first time someone suggested that the time-stamping on my online entry form logs might be incorrect. 

I guess I'm very gullible, but I believed the explanation that the player was entered correctly. I believed that there might be a problem with my online entry form time-stamping. Looking back, I feel so stupid for believing this. 

I accepted that this is MY mistake and I think I apologized for it. It really didn't occur that there could be an explanation other than my form being broken. I put the late entrants in.. and I had to modify pairings and make uneven sections. 

Later I learned that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the form. I followed through and contacted Formstack (the company I hire to operate my entry forms) and they assured me that there was no error, and the time stamps are always accurate. In this case particularly, the form time was 100% correct and I was told by Formstack staff that this specific entry really came in at the after 10pm time . 

Basically, without going on with the negativity, I just have to say that I feel saddened by this. It was a horrible way to end the semester. I will be devoting some time over break figuring out what to do when parents break the rules or show bad sportsmanship. I have to figure out what is the best way to revoke their membership. It's a problem that I won't enjoy solving. 

6 hours ago I just naturally had the attitude:  "Why would someone make this up?" I feel depressed that now I have to consider that these types of things will happen at scholastic chess tournaments. 

This experience was distracting and effected the quality of the tournament (I started 15 minutes late and I feel great joy when we start right on time).  This just caused me personal stress and a lot of extra work as well. I spent hours figuring out how a perfectly functional form is broken.. and I spent at least 15 minutes during the busiest time of the tournament, re-doing everything because I believed something that wasn't true.

But overall, I just learned an important lesson. And now comes the challenging part: I will probably start revoking and suspending memberships when parents break rules. And I will spend time over winter break figuring out the best way to do this. 

 

If I enter a tournament after the deadline… part 2

I made a similar post about entering after the deadline.

This is an important rule for parents to understand so I try very hard to discuss this regularly. 

This is one of the toughest things the tournament staff has to deal with you. We work with very nice members and their families, but occasionally their parents enter them after the Thursday 10pm deadline. And then we can't put them in the tournament, because of our deadline rule.

We really can't make an exception to this rule because it is so unfair to the players who got "turned away" in the past. I must try my absolute best to be a fair tournament organizer. And part of that is consistently enforcing the rules. 

Sometimes I get a situation like this: A parent enters at 10:01pm. That is a minute late. But then two more enter around 10:30pm. And then two more enter Friday morning. So it's not fair for me to let the person in who entered only 1 minute late. 

Before I started using the online form with entry deadline format, things were very hard to organize. It was very difficult to prepare large weekly tournaments when I wasn't exactly sure who is coming. So many last minute changes had to be made that we sometimes started late. 

The current format lead to great improvement where, except in the fact that I feel very bad and stressed delivering the bad news. I don't like to disappoint these nice chess families, but I have to be fair. 

And on a positive note, I'm usually happy to let the families make up the tournament in the future.

 

 

Spring 2014 Information

Registration is now open for our Spring 2014 tournaments. 

What is your policy about food and drinks?

We ask that kids do not bring food to the tournaments. Water is ok. We can consider special arrangements if you ask us in advance, but we wish to keep food outside of Panda Chess Academy for many reasons (food allergies, crumbs on the chess pieces, etc). 

What is TourneyBot and why do you use this?

To encourage players to be entered on time or early. 

At some point, the Panda Chess Academy Friday night tournaments became popular and we had to adapt. 

In the past, parents would send me an email to let me know that their kid is coming. It was a simple system.

Then I had a problem where parents would forget to enter the kids, show up, and tell me that they emailed me, or they weren't sure .. it would just cause delays. I like to have everything prepared ahead of time, and adding kids last minute basically erases most of what the preparation accomplished.

So we switched from "just send an email" to a simple website form. This way it is much easier to keep track of who entered properly and who didn't.  

Then we had a lot of people enter after the deadline and request that we still pair the kid. At first we tried to be flexible and we would add people in after the deadline. If it was possible, we would try to work with the family. But eventually too many people entered after the deadline… and we couldn't just add them all in. If we added a player one minute after the deadline… it doesn't seem fair to not enter the person who was an hour late.. or 12 hours late. 

So we really made this deadline absolute. And it was very sad to tell kids they can't come because they weren't entered in time. But overall, I feel that parents must know that we are being fair to everyone and that we don't bend this rule.

And that's where TourneyBot comes in. By sharing first names and login times, parents can have confidence knowing that we enforce the rules fairly and consistently. If someone entered after the Thursday 10pm deadline, and that person was paired in the tournament next day, then parents will know that something unfair happened. 

 But honestly, I just hate having to say no to parents, and it doesn't get any easier. By using tools like TourneyBot, it makes things easier for me and the staff.