GP Pittsburgh 2016: Sunday Morning

8:40 AM: In the hall. Dani’s been working on Super Sunday Series registration, and there are 71 people in the event so far. She has one registration slip that she can’t figure out—the number is illegible and the player’s name isn’t returning any results in the search. I take over. Turns out, that player is Canadian, so I have to change the Country drop down to find him.

9:09 AM: I realize I left my wallet in the hotel room, so I can’t sneak off stage to get a nice, fizzy beverage from the super-secret soda machine in the loading dock. Whomp whomp. SSS registration is up to 124, and I have some time to work on registration for events starting later in the day, like the Eternal Weekend Trial and Modern Mayhem.

9:17 AM: SSS Pairings go out. Final player count: 130. Head Judge Nicholas Sabin is forgoing the player meeting, which is less paper I have to print. Yay!

9:18 AM: There’s some confusion about whether anyone made the last call for SSS registration, and there’s one more player who wants to sign up. The registration staff gets him taken care of, I get him entered in the event, and an announcement is made for the last call. No one else signs up, so the final player count is 131.

9:31 AM: I’m caught up on entering registration for the 10 AM event (Eternal Weekend Trial). I take a few minutes to set up my chart for the day in my notebook. I’ve used an extra column all weekend, Rounds, because, well, different events have different numbers of rounds.

9:39 AM: First match slip from SSS comes in It’s a no show. I band up the registration slips from that event to get them out of the way, which frees up my little basket for results I’ve already entered.

9:46 AM: Snack time. There aren’t any more Swedish Fish in the tubs of “Miscellaneous Stage Supplies” in the judge/staff area, so I fill my jacket pocket with Kisses instead. When I get back to the stage, the HJ of the Eternal Weekend Trial is waiting for a player count update. There are seven new slips to enter. Three of them are for players named Nick. Current player count: 35.

9:57 AM: Last call for the Eternal Weekend Trial. I remember to put purple paper in the printer and print a sign for round end times to go out with the pairings, then go back to entering SSS results.

10:01 AM: Eternal Weekend Trial registration is done, and the final player count is 40. I pair round one, then set the Multi-Print queue. I’m about to print pairings when I realize that I forgot to set the starting table number. Whoops. At least I didn’t print first :)

10:15 AM: A player is missing from the Eternal Weekend Pairings. Turns out, his registration slip was marked with the wrong event (Modern Mayhem). It took a minute to track down where the problem was, but in the end, I got him in the event and assigned him a bye for the first round. There are 56 players currently in Modern Mayhem, and there are two minutes left in the first round of the SSS.

10:25 AM: There’s one table still out in the SSS, and the last call is made for Modern Mayhem. I notice that the match slips for the Eternal Weekend Trial are still on my printer. Hrmmm….

10:27 AM: I pair and print Round 2 of the SSS. I need some judge DCI numbers to enter the last few penalties from Round 1, but it’ll be a few more minutes before I get that. Pink paper is up next for Modern. I remember to set the starting table number this time.

10:30 AM: This was fun and exciting. I entered one of the results from the SSS backward. I just had the players switch seats and then started to do computer things. (Registration was working on sorting out the last two sign-ups for Modern Mayhem because they had some issues with their Modern Passes.) I change the pairings in WER, click “Done”, and get an error message along the lines of “All players need to be matched.” (They are all matched.) All of sudden, all 120-some players in the event appeared in the list of unmatched players, and the only actual pairing is the most recent one I entered manually. I’ll deal with this after Modern Mayhem fires.

10:34 AM: I get the last registration slips for Modern Mayhem, get those players entered, and get pairings out for Round 1. Time to work on this SSS problem. I grabbed the copy of pairings by table and tried to re-match the first two players. Nothing happens. I mean, I click the buttons to enter the pairing, and the players don’t show up in the column of pairings or leave the list of unmatched players. I start to estimate how long it’s going to take me to rebuild the event and then I try clicking a few more buttons. I hit enter from the (empty) search box on the pairings side, and everyone reappears, including my two attempts to re-match table 1, which are now tables 63 and 64. The unmatched player list is still full. I delete the two extra instances of that match, and the unmatched player list is now, suddenly and magically, empty. I click “Done” again. It works this time. That was close.

10:44 AM: The first slips from the Eternal Weekend Trial make their way to me. I get through those and the registration slips for 11 AM Turbo Sealed. There are 7 of them so far.

10:47 AM: Gorilla Todd appears in front of my stage with a cold, fizzy Diet Pepsi and my wallet.

10:53 AM: Three slips still out in the Eternal Weekend Trial. Some Round 2 SSS slips have appeared, but I’m going to leave those in the basket for a few minutes.

11:02 AM: I go to start the Turbo Sealed event, which is only one round, and I realized that there wasn’t an “Enrollment Complete” button. Whoever sanctioned the event sanctioned it as “Player List Only.” This means I can’t pair. I sanction a new event, export the player list from the old file and import it into the new file, and create pairings for Round 1. It takes about a minute. The HJ of the event gets seatings and pairings at the same time. It’s on yellow paper. The next event that fires will also be on yellow paper. Since this event is only one round, I won’t have to do anything else with this event until I have free time to enter the results.

11:24 AM: I band up the rest of the registration slips from the morning events and the match result slips from the first few completed rounds. In the process, I cut my thumb on a piece of pink paper.

11:29 AM: There are two slips left out in the SSS round, and I have to pee sooooooo bad. The 11:30 AM Vintage Plus event has one player registered, so it’s not going to fire. Vintage hasn’t fired all weekend :(

11:36 AM: SSS Round 3 pairs. I really have to pee, but now there are only two slips out in Modern Mayhem. I band up some more slips and drop them in my filing cabinet. There isn’t an event at noon—the next event is the 12:30 PM Standard Plus. I open up that file and start enrolling players.

11:43 AM: Modern Mayhem Round 2 pairs. I sprint off the stage. Brb.

11:52 AM:Ahhh. That’s better. It’s time to catch up on paperwork: banding match slips from finished rounds, entering players into Standard Plus, making sure I have judges entered in the WER files for all the active events.

12:09 AM: Someone handed me two Jeremy Tomacooper Clue tokens a second ago. The Eternal Weekend Trial round flips, and I get the starting table number for Standard Plus, which has 19 players registered right now. There are a couple blue and pink slips in my basket, so I start entering those.

12:16 AM: Table 30 in the SSS lost their match slip. One of the judges on the event asked if I could print a new one—nope :( I handed him some blue paper and asked him to make a match-slip-sized replacement. This is what I get back:

12:32 PM: Standard Plus parings are on the printer on yellow paper, but the HJ is missing.

12:33 PM: A judge asks about information for an investigation: a player is playing with badly warped foils, and she (the judge) thinks that it might be the same player she issued the same penalty to yesterday in a different event. I dig out the event file and check the penalties—it wasn’t the same player.

12:35 PM: There’s the Standard Plus HJ! Pairings for Round 1 go out.

12:43 PM: There are two slips out for both the SSS and Modern Mayhem. I’m betting that SSS flips first, so the printer is set with blue paper.

12:45 PM: I was right. SSS Round 4 pairings go out. The Modern Mayhem HJ comes up with one slip, thinking it’s the last one. Nope. Table 745 is still missing. I start entering players for the 1:00 PM event, which is Team Sealed Plus, while I’m waiting.

12:55 PM: The HJ of the Turbo Sealed event comes back with his match result slips. Team Sealed is about ready to go with 14 teams registered. The mystery of table 745 has been solved—that table has a lengthy extension as a result of the aforementioned investigation. They still have 16 minutes to go.

1:04 PM: After two last-minute team registrations, seatings for deck construction go out for Team Sealed Plus. That event is green. I’m almost out of different colors of paper.

1:10 PM: Table 745 is in! Round 3 pairings for Modern Mayhem go out. The Eternal Weekend Trial is getting pretty close to the end of its third round too, so I switch the printer to purple paper.

1:13 PM: Speaking of Eternal Weekend Trial...Round 4 pairings go out. The first few slips from SSS Round 4 are trickling in now—they’re all no-shows. About 6 of them.

1:17 PM: I have a second, so I enter the results from the Turbo Sealed round. The event doesn’t want to upload because it’s only one round. Two-Headed Giant starts at 1:30 PM, so I open that event and start entering players. I wish I were working a little further ahead on this.

1:25 PM: My match result slips are languishing in the box at registration. I leave the stage to rescue them.

1:31 PM: I print 2HG seatings--actual seatings, since the table numbering hasn't been adjusted yet for the event's space. There are 23 teams total.

1:39 PM: The last slip in Round 1 of Standard Plus comes up. I also discover that the printed schedule I have is all wrong—it says that Legacy Plus is at 2:30 PM, but it’s really at 2:00 PM. The gap in the schedule is really at 2:30. I plan on sneaking away for French fries as soon as Legacy Plus fires off.

1:42 PM: I should drink more water.

2:02 PM: Legacy Plus pairings go out. I go get food. Yay, food!