# Ratings and tsh

How to maintain a rating system using tsh.

Updated Sat Sep 19 11:59:30 EDT 2009 for tsh 3.300.

One of the more popular features of tsh is its calculation of tournament ratings. When you set up your tournament’s “.t” files with information about your players, you enter their pretournament ratings, and if necessary their career game totals (depending on your rating system, you may be able to use the “`USERATINGS`” command to do this automatically). As your tournament progresses, you can display current ratings using the “`RATings`” and “`ScoreBoard`” commands. At the end of your tournament, you can submit ratings data to your rating officer using the “`SUBMIT`” command (if your rating system is supported), or by generating a ratings report using commands like “`ABSPgrid`” or “`AUPAIR`” and emailing the results.

The rest of this section describes in greater technical detail what is involved in connecting tsh to a rating system, and its intended audience includes ratings officers and directors who want to discuss tsh with their ratings officers. As always, if there is anything that tsh doesn’t yet do that you would like it to do, please contact John Chew at poslfit@gmail.com. Each one of tsh’s features is there because someone asked for it; if a feature is missing, it’s just because you haven’t asked for it yet.

## Manual Rating Systems

Example users: Philippines, Toronto Speed

It’s easy to use tsh to run a small rating system. First, ask John Chew to assign you a unique rating system name. tsh will store your rating system’s data in a subdirectory of “lib/ratings”. For example, for historical reasons, NASPA ratings are stored in “lib/ratings/nsa”.

Then at the beginning of each rated event, use the “`USERATINGS`” command. This copies ratings from a file called “current.txt” in your rating system directory into your tournament data files.

At the end of your tournament, use the “`EXPORTRATINGS`” command. This will create a new rating data file called “new.txt” in your rating system directory.

Finally, save a copy of your old “current.txt” file in case you need to rerate a sequence of events (it happens more often than you would think), and replace it with “new.txt”.

## Legacy Rating Systems

Example users: ABSP

If you have an existing legacy rating system that cannot easily be connected to the web, you should determine what ratings data format it uses (tsh currently supports its native format, Homan, Aupair and ABSP grid formats), and have your tournament directors e-mail the appropriate reports to your ratings officer. If you can persuade your ratings officer to post current ratings online, your directors can use the “`USERATINGS`” command.

## Automated Ratings Systems

Example users: NASPA

If you have a large rating system or like automation, you should set up (or ask John Chew to set up) a web page to which your tournament directors can upload ratings data using the “`SUBMIT`” command. Once it’s uploaded, your web site may immediately calculate new ratings and make them available for download to the “`USERATINGS`” command, or it may hold them for manual verification, as NASPA currently does.