# About tsh

... and its documentation.

Updated Sat Sep 19 11:34:45 EDT 2009 for tsh 3.320.

tsh is a Perl application for managing Scrabble tournaments, first written in 1999, continuously maintained since then and freely distributed for noncommercial use by John Chew <poslfit@gmail.com>. This document and tsh are copyright © 2014 John J. Chew, III.

tsh is a program that deals with the logistics of running a tournament. With it, you can automatically or manually pair players, enter results, print standings, debug scorecard errors, estimate new player ratings and prepare data submissions for official ratings systems. tsh has been used at dozens of tournaments, producing high-quality pairings and reports with an estimated maximum operator:player ratio of 1:250. Among the many events that have been run using tsh are: the World Championship, the U.S. National Championship, the U.K. National Championship, the Canadian Championship, the U.S. Players’ Championship, and the King’s Cup as well as countless smaller weekend and one-day tournaments throughout the English, Italian, German, Polish and Norwegian Scrabble communities.

tsh comes with detailed documentation describing all of its features. Not everyone needs to read all of this document, and U.K. users in particular should begin by reading Stewart Holden’s Beginners’ Guide to TSH. NASPA users may benefit from reading Vince Castellano’s TSH QuickStart.

If this is your first time using tsh, or if you have not yet used version 3.000 or later, you must read the Introduction. You may then continue with other sections listed at the top of this page. All users should at least skim the section on commands. Data entry staff should read the sections on data entry, generating generating reports and troubleshooting. At least one person at each tournament should have browsed all sections of the manual before the tournament begins, including those on installation, configuration and pairing theory. If you want to print a copy for your reference during the tournament, the entire reference manual is also available in one file.

Before each tournament, you should update your copy of tsh and read the news of what has changed in recent versions, and follow the links there to changes in the other manual sections.

Free telephone support is available by prior arrangement. If you are planning to use tsh at a tournament, please contact me (John Chew) at least a few weeks in advance for help in setting up configuration files, and to discuss your support needs. If there is a specific feature that you need added to tsh, or support for a new language, please ask for it as far in advance of your event as possible. There is also a Yahoo group devoted to the needs of tsh users.

If you would like to make a donation to help make it possible for me to continue improving and supporting tsh, I welcome them via the “Make A Donation” PayPal button at the bottom of my poslfit home page. I am also available for hire to help run or webcast tournaments and games, on site or remotely, but am frequently booked 6-12 months in advance.

## System Requirements

tsh is written in Perl, the multiplatform scripting language. Every released version is tested with OS/X and should therefore also run on common versions of Unix. tsh versions are tested a few times a year with Windows XP, and whenever a user requests it. If you are using an operating system not mentioned here, please allow a few extra weeks for any software changes that may be needed to bring the current version of tsh into compatibility with it.

Disk space and memory requirements are minimal, a fairly small number of megabytes each. One computer is recommended for every 250 or so players, and one networked printer per tournament, though having more of each will reduce data entry and report printing time and improve redundancy.

If an Internet connection is available at the event site, tsh can be used to automatically update web coverage of the tournament, and last-minute patches to the program itself can be automatically downloaded. If not, tsh can run without these features.