Using ASE 8 for multi-session events

This article recommends using the multi-session features of ASE 8 to handle year long championships events (such as the Gower Trophy, Addison Trophy and President Cup at the Manly Leagues Bridge Club) and explains how to do so.

• automatically calculating the outright masterpoints for the year long events in addition to the session masterpoints
• automatically calculating and displaying the outright positions and ranks during the year - thus removing the need and work to maintain and publish separate excel spreadsheets
• and thus avoiding unnecessary work and chance of error

• maintaining an outright list of names for those retaining eligibility for the event and using this with adjustments as necessary to produce accurate session name lists
• setting in ASE 8 the number of best scores to use to allow for the worst score to be dropped after five months and the worst two after eight months
• taking care to maintain and use a single source of truth for the championship event file - if for example the MP Secretary makes a change to the ASE file then this file would need to be returned to the director for use at the next session in the event (using the wrong event file would require subsequent rework) - similarly if a substitute director was handling one of the championship sessions.

1. When you "Start a new event" for the first session, give it an event title of Gower Tropy 2009 or equivalent and choose the "More than one session" option on the first screen.
2. Continue setting up the event and first session normally until you have entered the names for the first session using the normal "for the current session of play". After you have entered the names, click on the "Link Names" button at the bottom of the 2Names tab to create an Outright field from the session names you have just entered.
3. When you start a session other than the first one in the championship you open the existing championship ASE event file and then go to Session | New to add a new session to the event (same as for any multi-session event) - after this the process is the same for setting up any session.
4. For the subsequent sessions start to enter the names using the normal "for the current session of play" Names button but then press F3 to bring up a selectable list of the outright pairs. Fill in the session table positions by selecting the appropriate outright pair with your mouse for whatever table position the competing pair is then sitting. Do not enter the names of outright field pairs in any other way.
5. Walk-in pairs or substitutes can be handled by putting these in the Session field but not the Outright field. Walk-in pairs are added as you would a normal session pair - with no outright pair linking or number. Substitutes are handled by first selecting the outright pair from the outright pair list, and then editing, in the session pairs list, the name of the person who is being substituted. This ensures the session reports and MPs refer to the correct session pair while the outright reports and MPs etc refer to the correct outright pair.
   
6. A new pair can be added to the Outright field if one wants to join the competition after the first session - put them in the Outright field and then select them for the Session field as above.. 
7. NOTE that the same "session" pair cannot substitute for two "outright" pairs - eg if two outright pairs are players A1/A2 and B1/B2, and both A2 and B2 are away for a session, A1 and B1 cannot play together as subsitutes for both outright pairs (we have allowed this in the past but it is against masterpointing regulations as well as impossible in ASE).
8. NOTE ALSO that if you change the names in either the Session or Outright name fields for a session that you have already scored, then you need to score that session again to ensure the right scores and masterpointing.
9. After scoring up a session on the 4Score Up tab, use the Best Results button on the 5Results tab to eliminate the worst score when this is required after the fifth session. To eliminate the worst score after 5 rounds you would enter 05 and 01 respectively. To eliminate the worst 2 scores after 8 rounds you would enter 08 and 02.
   
10. NOTE that after these adjusted reports have been produced, it is essential to rescore the entire event before adding in a new session/round.