New mamer manager help file This file contains portions of server help files(written by Friar) and mamer help files(written by mlong) relevant to new mamer managers. toddmf merged these files, updated out of date information, added some new things, and removed some contradictions, hopefully resulting in a file useful for new mamer managers. With the release of mamer 2.0, much of this document has been rewritten by toddmf. Send questions, comments, suggestions, etc. to toddmf. Introduction and general server considerations ---------------------------------------------- Congratulations on becoming a mamer manager! You have earned this position through your high level of maturity and interest in FICS chess(tournaments in particular). Less than 1% of FICS users have been given the honor of being a TM. That being said, being a TM is also a responsibility. It is essential that you continue to maintain a higher standard of maturity than most users for several reasons. The most obvious situations are problems in tourneys. Users often get angry or impatient for several reasons during a tourney. For example: User has just been given chaos points, user is angry because he was flagged in a drawn game, user strongly disagrees with mamer policy, etc. In these situations, it is necessary for you to stay calm, be competent, and keep channel 49 and/or the tourney under control without reacting too harshly. Another reason is that TMs are often mistaken for admins, especially by new/intermediate users. Please kindly help them if possible, but refer them to an admin if one really is necessary. Expectations ------------ Apart from staying out of trouble on FICS, the only requirement that you must meet in order to remain a mamer manager is to meet a monthly quota for tourneys managed. Currently, it is 5 tourneys per month. This is only a minimum, though. Feel free to manage as many as you like. This is fun, remember? :) This quota does not apply to admins, several of whom only manage when there is a need for a tourney and no other TMs are online. The quota is in place in order to keep the manager staff active. If you are unable to remain active as a manager temporarily, message the COO(currently toddmf) and explain why. If you plan on being inactive for a long period of time(at least 3 months, or longer than summer break for students), it is probably best if you step down as TM(if you've done well as a TM you would probably be able to return as TM when you return to FICS). Mamer's user commands --------------------- Before you get to the the details of manager commands and how to manage a tourney, you should first make sure you are well equipped to deal with users' questions about how to use mamer. If you are unfamiliar with any of these commands, you should try them. Command Abbrev Level Basic info --------------------------------------------------------------------- finger | fi | 0 | Displays the stats for a user. help | h | 0 | List commands and descripts. join | j | 0 | Request to enter a tourney. listmanagers | lm | 0 | Displays the Managers list. listtourneys | lt | 0 | Displays the tournament list. listtourneyvars | vars | 0 | Displays the tournament variables. listtourneygames | games | 0 | Displays the tournament games. listplayers | lp | 0 | Displays the players in the tourney. showcommands | sc | 0 | List commands and descripts. showhelpfile | shf | 0 | Shows a help file. who | who | 0 | Displays the tournament games. withdraw | with | 0 | Remove yourself from a tourney. User commands notes: The "finger" command shows your statistics by default. You can see other players' stats by "mam finger name". "help" is the same as "showcommands". To see help files, use "showhelpfile". The old commands "grid" and "standings" are now all neatly packaged in the "who" command. The players are listed in rank order. The "upset points" in the "who" listing are temporary points(they are deleted when the tourney is deleted). They are calculated like this: If you beat a higher rated player, you get the difference in rating in upset points. If you draw a higher rated player, you get half the difference in rating points, rounded down. For example, a 2000 who beats a 2101 gets 101 upset points. If he had drawn, the 2000 would have gained 50 upset points. Ratings from when the players join the tourney are used. The "Perfrm" (performance rating) in the "who" listing is a measure of what the player's USCF(and several other similar systems) rating would be if this was the only tourney he played in. Again, the ratings from when the players join the tourney are used. Here is the formula: Perf. Rating = Avg. opp. rating + 400 * ((wins-losses)/rounds) Most commands now require you to specify the tourney number! Remember this when giving help. Players very often ask about how to find out who is in a tourney, how to see the standings, how to see a grid, how to see which games are in progress, and how to see tourney variables. It is useful to have an alias for telling 49 something along the lines of "Please use the commands 'mam games #', 'mam vars #', and 'mam who #' for information about the tourney." Introduction to managing tourneys --------------------------------- The first thing you should do after becoming a manager is to join channel 48. You can ask for the advice of more experienced TMs in the channel if you run in to any problems while managing. Channel 48 is also used to discuss other mamer issues, and it is just as often used for friendly chat among TMs. Here is a tutorial on how to manage a typical tourney. The first thing you need to know is that you will be sending a lot of tells to mamer while managing. To save yourself some typing, you should either use the server alias "mam"(short for xtell mamer) or create an even shorter alias like m. In this tutorial, I will use "mam". Step 1: Create a tourney ------------------------ To create a new tourney, type "mam create". You should get the following response: mamer(TD) tells you: Created tourney number: 6 Contact the COO if mamer tells you that "you do not have permission". If you did create the tourney successfully, all you need to remember is the tourney number. In this tutorial, we'll continue managing tourney number 6. Step 2: Select the tournament variable settings ----------------------------------------------- Assuming you are now the manager for tourney 6, type "mam vars 6". You get back a listing of the current tournament variable settings: : : (T)ime: 4 : (I)ncrement: 0 : (R)ounds: 0 : Max (P)layers: 16 : (M)ode: r (r)ated or (u)nrated : (S)tyle: s (s)wiss or (r)oundrobin : (V)ariant: w (w)ild, (r)egular, (b)ug, or (s)uicide : (W)ild Type: 10 (0), (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (8), (9)8a, (10)fr : Rating (L)ow: 0 : Rating (H)igh: 9999 : : Manager: toddmf The letters in () refer to the variable shortcut to be used when changing a value for a variable. Here is what the variables mean: Time -- Same as always: minutes to start the game with Increment -- Same as always: additional seconds per move Rounds -- Number of rounds in the tourney. If you leave this at 0, mamer will choose an optimal number of rounds. Max Players -- The tourney will automatically close and start when this many players have joined. Mode -- Will the tourney games be rated or unrated? Style -- Round Robin(everyone plays everyone) or Swiss System(system where, generally speaking, players play opponents with the same score in the tourney each round). Variant -- What type of game is being played? Regular is used for blitz, standard, and lightning. Wild Type -- This only appears when Variant is set to Wild. Use this to set which wild type will be played. Rating Low -- Players with a rating lower than this cannot join. Rating High -- Players with a rating higher than this cannot join. You can change these variables before the tourney starts by using "mam stv # var value". For example, "mam stv 6 t 1" would change the time variable to 1. Once the tourney has opened, you can only change the Max Players and Style variants, and once it has closed and started, you cannot change any variables! Step 3: Beginning the tournament -------------------------------- After you have set the variables, you need to open the tournament so that players may join. To do so, type "mam open #" ("mam open 6" in our case). At this point, mamer will announce the tourney in channel 49 and with a cshout. You can duplicate the announcements by using the "mam announce #" command to announce tourney number #. At the moment, there is no limit on how often you can announce. I hope not to hear many complaints about mamer making too many cshouts, so please use announce reasonably(somewhere around once per 30-60 seconds is reasonable). When you have enough players, you can close and start the tournament. To do so, "mam close #". If you are unable to find enough players(a minimum of 4 is needed for mamer to run a tourney) in a reasonable amount of time, you should delete the tourney by using "mam delete #" where # is the tourney number. Step 4: Running the tournament itself ------------------------------------- If nobody leaves the tournament, there should be no problems. Mamer should take care of itself. If someone leaves the tourney or logs off of FICS, you may have some work to do. After managing several tourneys, you will have a good sense of how long to wait for someone to return before taking action. The commands you're going to need are "forfeit" and "setres". "mam forfeit handle #" forfeits a player from tourney number #. Use the forfeit command if a player has left, you don't expect him back, and there is at least another round left in the tourney. "mam setres # white black 1/=/0" sets the result of white vs black in tourney # to a win for white/draw/win for black. Use this if you are late in the tourney so that the player doesn't have to forfeit his previous points. Also use setres if you simply want to keep the tourney moving but expect the player to be back(this is useful for tourneys at very fast time controls). Step 5: The tournament ends --------------------------- Mamer will usually end the tournament automatically and post the final results. If it does not, type "mam games #" to see any uncompleted games. Check if those players are logged in(a fast way to do this is "in handle"), and use forfeit/setres accordingly. If there are any problems with the data of the tourney then "message mlong" the correct values and let the players know that the results will be corrected. Points in the tourneys are not recorded; what is important is wins, losses, and placement in the final tourney standings. If you have just managed a scheduled tourney(see "help motd" for a list of them), please message the COO the names of the winner(s) and anyone else who may have managed the tourney, so that he can create a news item each week. Also, please "mam keep # 1" to set tourney #'s keep variable to 1. This allows people to view the scheduled tourney's standings days after the tourney. Chaos points ------------ As a TM, you will soon have the power to penalize tourney abuse by giving someone chaos points. This is done by typing "mam addchaos handle #", where # is the number of chaos points(use a negative number to remove chaos points). When someone has 100 chaos points, mamer will censor him, thus preventing him from playing in tourneys. Firstly, let's talk about when you should not give someone chaos points. If you forfeit someone or they withdraw before the tourney ends, mamer will automatically give that person 10 chaos points per round missed. Chaos points should be given out for non tourney games, profanity, and other distractions(such as telling 49 "hi mamer" repeatedly after being warned about overuse of it). Use good judgement. If a player is playing a non tourney game that will end in 30 seconds, maybe you should not act. However, if he is in a standard game and ignores your request to end it and start the tourney, chaos points are warranted. You should probably give somewhere between 10 and 20 chaos points per disruption. If you find yourself wanting to give out less than 10, you should consider giving a warning instead. If you find yourself wanting to give more than 20, you should probably contact an admin about the abuse. In any case, whenever you add chaos points, please send them a message explaining how many points were given, why you did so, and note that decisions can be appealed to the COO. If you don't send a message, the player may never knew he did anything wrong, repeat his actions, and soon find himself censored by mamer. By sending a message, the player has a better chance of not repeating his actions, and it also necessitates having a good reason for adding the points. Manager commands ---------------- Here is a summary of all the manager commands. : addchaos | ac | 25 | Adds (or subs) chaos points. : announce | ann | 10 | Announce the tournament to the working channel. : addtotourney | att | 25 | Add a user to a tourney. : create | cr | 10 | Creates a new tournament. : close | cl | 10 | Closes and starts a tournament. : delete | del | 10 | Deletes a tournament. : forfeit | fo | 10 | Remove a user from a tourney. : keep | k | 25 | Keep a tourney in memory. : loadedusers | lu | 25 | Displays the loaded users. : messman | mm | 50 | Message all of the Managers. : open | ot | 10 | Opens the tournament to players. : setinfo | si | 100 | Set a user's finger info. : setmanagerlevel | sml | 50 | Sets manager's level. : setres | sr | 10 | Sets the result of a game. : setstat | ss | 50 | Sets a specific finger stat. : settourneyvar | stv | 10 | Sets a Tourney's Variables. : shutdown | sd | 50 | Shuts down Mamer. All of the level 10 and 25 commands have been covered except for "addtotourney" and "loadedusers". "addtotourney player #" forces player to join tourney number #. This is useful for players who want to play in a tourney that is about to close but can't figure out how to join the first time. If you need to use this, please try to tell the person how to join future tournaments so that he doesn't rely on the manager to use addtotourney. It is also useful to create test tournaments, but aside from mlong testing code, there is rarely a need for that. "loadedusers" is simply a list of players in mamer's "memory"; players who have told mamer something recently. The only practical application for most managers that I can think of is trying to check if a new mamer player having trouble is even getting as far as telling mamer something. A note on "delete": Tourneys that aren't "kept"(using keep) are automatically deleted after two hours. Please don't delete them before this unless you either want to abort a tourney in progress or open or the tourney list is getting very cluttered with many fast(ie 1 0, 0 1 suicide) tourneys. Keeping tourney standings available for some time after the tourney ends was a feature requested by many users, so please don't negate it by deleting the tourneys prematurely. Historical information about mamer ---------------------------------- Users sometimes ask about this information. You may also find it interesting. The following is a cleaned up and up-to-date version of mamer 1.x's "mam help about". "Mamer is an automated tournament director for use on FICS only. Fred Baumgarten originally wrote this code because there was a need and Chevrier Joel, the creator of Tomato(another TD program), would not share the code. Fred gave me(mlong) the code in mid 1995 with the stipulation I not release it to anyone. I have modified and (I hope) improved mame (now mamer). Mamer stands for "manage me". Plus the -r- for the differentiation between mame (Fred's) code and mamer (mlong's) code. Fred's words follow: The intention to write this tournament director program came out of the need to have such a program. Tomato - used at FICS and written by darkside was not released to the public. Darkside even did not want to accept a non disclosure agreement - so I decided to write such a program myself. (Tomato was sold to ICC shortly after and has been used there ever since - toddmf). The program is written in C and will support a bunch of new features soon. It is beta state since Version 0.5 but there _are_ bugs. Fred Baumgarten . Have fun !!! Mamer is maintained and coded here on FICS by mlong. PLEASE! FOR BUGS PERTAINING TO MAMER TALK TO mlong." mlong has always maintained the mamer code. He also was in control of mamer's day to day operations at first. GBPacker soon took over this position, and fpawn followed. toddmf currently holds this position. Mamer's largest(in terms of number of players) tourneys occurred shortly after games in the 1997 Deep Blue-Kasparov rematch. Some of these tourneys drew 50-60+ players(if anyone knows the exact numbers, please tell me). The longest tourney(in terms of number of rounds) was probably a 15 round, 16 player 1 0 RR tourney held in early 1998(again, please tell me if this is not accurate). See also: every other help file [Last modified: September 1, 1998 -- toddmf]