Monday 9 January 2023

Tournament techincal techniques

 For this years Australian Open, I decided to write code that put a delay on the DGT broadcasts. While I am aware that broadcasts websites can do this, it often requires having to contact them directly to request the broadcast delay. Writing my own code made rebroadcasting easier as I simply provided a link to the delayed broadcast and it can be shown by whoever wishes to cover the tournament. The only requirement for this to work (apart from installing python 3.x on your laptop) is you have your own hosting site.

Having set this up I did notice one interesting side effect. Most sites will show the correct time, except sites that use the DGT website code itself! The reason being is that one of the pgn tag used in the games.pgn file is [ReferenceTime] This is the time of day when the move was recorded, and would normally not be useful. However the DGT web software then adjusts the clock times using this value, meaning that the time left display for one or other player is out by the value if the delay! So if you are watching a delayed broadcast this is an issue.

The other technical issue I resolved was with the DGT 3000 clocks. Sometimes when the time needs to be adjusted due to an illegal move, restarting the clock simply sent you back to the adjust time menu a 2nd time. The reason for this is that you need to have the lever on the correct side to move *before* you begin adjusting the time. If you change the lever afterwards, it assumes you've either modified the wrong side, or simply broken something.  


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