GoDraw-Past Improvements and Bugs

PLAYER ENTRY GRADE: The player list contains the latest player rating. This is used to calculate the player's entry grade. The player's strength and previous entry grade are shown in the Note field in the form [strength]<old grade>. Once a player is entered, further downloads of the player list will not change the entry grade of already entered players. All newly entered player grades will be adjusted as needed.
DRAW EDITING: The Cancel button caption is now specific as to what process is canceled e.g. Cancel Draw, Cancel Manual, or Cancel Edit
PAIRING SIMULATION: The number of pairing trials that GoDraw makes to try to get the best pairing can be changed via the Advanced button in the Settings->Rules page. The default is 3, and the random number generator is seeded from a calculated value to ensure pairings are repeated for diagnostic purposes. In the special case of a single shot i.e. set the trials to 1, the random number generator is seeded from the current clock time. So repeated pairings should differ.
ROOMS: You now get a reminder that if you allocate too few boards for the current pairing, then extras needed will be added to the last of your numbered rooms.

BUGFIX IMPLEMENTED in version 6.5.0 released on 05/08/19:

CORRUPTED SOSOS TIEBREAK IN EXPORT RATINGS: Fixed corruption in calculated SOSOS tie-break for ratings export. Due to origin shift from shodan=0 to EGF's minimum mms=0

CHANGING THE BAR DURING REGISTRATION: During registration, the bar setting just reports how many players there are above the level you choose. It does not adjust initial McMahon scores. Spurious operator warnings were displayed at each change. These have been removed and displayed on the status bar instead.

DISPLAY OF FRACTIONAL MMS IN TOURNAMENT RESULTS: Fixed rounding error in the display of a player with an mms of -1/2.

ROOMS: In menu Settings->Rules you can allocate rooms containing different numbers of boards. If you do not allocate enough boards, GoDraw now creates a new room for the extra boards, instead of adding them to the last room.

GROUPS

BUGFIXES IMPLEMENTED in version 6.4.2 released on 11/06/18: When creating a special group e.g. players prefer to play or players must not play - others in the group, the group code starts with a single letter ID (A-Z) followed by a single selector character ( + - * ~ ), where the selector means:
(+) prefer to play
(-) prefer not to play
(*) must play
(~) must not play

It is common to use the last selector to prevent family members from playing each other. All the possible codes are shown in the dropdown list.

You can also create one of 10 top groups with a code like (d:) where d is one of the digits (0 - 9). GoDraw was automatically completing a typed 1 to 1: and if you then press Enter the register edit is happily accepted, but you have created a supergroup and not a special group. The auto complete has been switched off and you get a message reminding you what your options are. You cannot continue until you close the message, so you cannot inadvertently create a top group when you meant to create a special group.

You can also use the menu Tools->Groups to create any group of your choice. Here you can easily select players and the super/special group codes cannot be confused.

EDIT CLUB OR COUNTRY

A trailing space on a name generated a syntax error message. Spaces are now trimmed.

INSTALLATION: A separate self-extracting executable is provided for Windows 10 users who do not want to use the Administrator account. It installs all files into the folder C:\Users\Public\GoDrawSys by default.
IMPORT REGISTER: If any errors are detected in the register text file, the error message displays the whole line containing the error number. Any non-ANSI or illegal control characters in the line are made visible.

SAME-CLUB GAMES: GoDraw aims to avoid same-club games below the bar. We now give priority for choosing an alien opponent to those with the largest number of same-club games.
NO CLUB: Players entering with club 'No Club' are no longer kept apart.
EDITING THE DRAW: You now get a warning message that any printouts refer to the previous round, not the currently edited one. Also mis-clicks while editing no longer produce an operator error, but the information is quietly displayed in the status bar of the GoDraw window.

SEEDING A NEW TOURNAMENT: Creating a new tournament by seeding from a previous one and then deleting unwanted players: this resulted in spurious blank lines at the top of the register.
CLOSING REGISTER: Running a non-McMahon tournament produced a spurious message regarding setting the bar.
SWISS HANDICAP: Assigning a large handicap manually produced a display of the form hcap++komi.

BAR SETTING: The setting of the bar has been improved, by limiting the bar-depth to less than 3 grades difference. The bar-depth is the difference between the maximum entry grade and the bar-grade. This restriction avoids the frequent occurrence where high dan players are drawn in even games against kyu players. It has been shown that if players are correctly graded, the latter have have extremely low probability of winning the tournament.

If you change the bar before close of registration, you now get a message warning that the bar will be recalculated when you do close the register. Furthermore at that point you will get a message stating where the bar has been set and explaining that you can change the bar if this is needed.
SMALL TOURNAMENTS: When running small McMahon tournaments, you may experience the situation where the draw is incomplete. The pairing method works well when the number of players is at least 3 x number of rounds. If there is an incomplete draw, you now get a message with hints as to how to manage the situation manually.

REVERSE REGISTER SORT: Some actions would leave the register sorted in an order different to the displayed order. So clicking a player produced the wrong details.
KOMI STONES: If the handicap exceeds 9 stones in an edited draw, komi stones are awarded to black. The handicap and komi strings were merged without an intervening "+" leading to excessive handicap and a complaint when the draw edit was saved.
ACCESS VIOLATION: There were instances where some action would result in an access violation message, but GoDraw could continue without harm. This was experienced when importing a register from a file with blank lines containing invisible characters. It was also seen when ending a manual draw resulted in not all players paired.