TRPC also gives you an option for tabbing Karl Popper style tournaments (KP). In fact in is much more optimized for KP than WSDC. In the KP mode it has no problem with three judges, judges ranking and similar set backs that we found when trying to tab WSDC. Here we will briefly discuss the main differences you need to be aware of when you decide to run Karl Popper style tournament.

 

Set up

 

Basic set up is similar to a WSDC tournament. When you come to the window where you enter tournament name and place, make sure that you choose Karl Popper (Europe) as a format. From here on the set up is basically same as for WSDC. Make sure that you checked three speakers on second screen and optionally decided to record ranks. You will see that when it comes to the tie – breaking system you will have no problem adjusting it. Everything else is the same as explained previously.

 

Entering teams, judges and rooms is the same as mentioned before.

 

Running the tournament

 

Scheduling rounds works in the same way as in WSDC tournament. You will see the difference when it comes Display Schedule window. Here TRPC will highlight all mismatches – blue for one win difference and red for two wins difference. Note that that is just for better orientation when you are manually placing judges and it will not stop you from proceeding to print or enter results.

 

The next difference you will see is next to judges. After judges names you will see judges rankings (if you decided to use the, ABC). This will help you place judges better. If you want to automatically place judges you need to tell this to TRPC in set up process (look set up in the previous section). Note that the way a TRPC places judge is that it will place the best  ranked judges in most critical rooms. It can happen at many tournaments that you want to have a similar judges panels in all rooms, if you want to know how to do that check How we tabbed Heart of Europe 2012 and 2013 section.

 

When entering results for a difference from WSDC in KP you will not get sum of points so you will need to check that manually.

 

Karl Popper style has a problem with judges printing. When printing it will randomly position judges inside panel (i.e. judge you want as a chair can be listed as third one). In order to avoid that you need to change the tournament style before printing. When you are ready to print a draw just change format from Karl Popper to Asian Parliamentary, print and than change it to Karl Popper again.

After the tournament

 

All printouts are the same as in WSDC. There is one additional option – printing team cards. This option is also available in WSDC but does not work well. Here it can serve as a nicer way to print tab for participants as Packets Results.

 

How we tabbed Heart of Europe and Prague Debate Spring

 

Heart of Europe debate tournament and Prague Debate Spring are examples of international debate tournament where you have teams of five and three debaters per round. In that sense it is exactly the tournament TRPC is not optimized for.  But with a few tricks you can run it with TRPC and produce a perfectly power-paired tournament that is on time. I have served as tabulation officer at Heart of Europe since 2011 but since 2012 I was in charge of all tabulation and we found what we think is best to run such a tournament. We used the same method also for Prague Debate Spring. Of course if you find the way that better suits you use it and share it with the other tournaments. Here is just our idea for tabbing such a tournament.

 

What we do is basically use the option to change debate style with no data loss during the tournament and we also combine it with Excel sheet for speakers tab, as you will see. For me this is one of the best parts of TRPC, you can change the style of tournament and even lie to TRPC which round you want to schedule (look to Useful tricks if you want to know more about that)

 

Set up

 

Since TRPC does not support five speakers we set up tournament, as there would be one speaker per team. We use Karl Popper format as basics, since it gives us most options for judges placement, and it has not problem with handling three judges.  We would change style to Asian Parliamentary only before printing since we want to indicate who is the chair of debate.

We only enter team names and just NN for that one speaker per team.

 

Running the tournament

 

Since we run it as a one-speaker team you also need to note how you will enter the team points. Since TRPC only allows you to enter maximum of 100 points we enter only last two digits of team points (i.e. 56 if team has 256 points). This is perfectly acceptable since points are always between 210 and 280.

 

From here on the tournament is more or less the same as any other tournament. Since we are using TRPC only for team tab and you need to enter speakers points separately in to speakers tab.

 

Speakers tab

 

For speakers tab we keep a separate Excel sheet. We use basic function like summation and average to make it useful. Here is an example of sheet from Prague Debate Spring:

 

We also use it for double-checking since the way we enter scores into TRPC does not simultaneously check math.  After each round we sort teams in excel and than compare this to TRPC. This gives us simple way to find possible mistakes. Note that for this kind of operation it is good to have at least two persons in tab room, one for main tab on TRPC and the other one for excel. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also use it for double-checking since the way we enter scores into TRPC does not simultaneously check math.  After each round we sort teams in excel and than compare this to TRPC. This gives us simple way to find possible mistakes. Note that for this kind of operation it is good to have at least two persons in tab room, one for main tab on TRPC and the other one for excel.