IDPA Match and Condensed Final Report (Bumps)

PractiScore Tools iOS 1.xx Scoring App
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Last weekend I ran stats for a Tier 3 sanctioned IDPA match with 176 registrants. When the match scores were posted, we used the above-named report from my iOS Master to call out first, second, and third-place awards as well as the earned match promotions. The report I ended up with from this match had 9 errors. Some of them I spotted immediately because a Master was marked as having earned a match bump. But I found others as well so I audited the scores manually and calculated the bumps. There were 8 additional bumps.

IDPA says a shooter earns a bump if they beat 5 people in their Div/Class or above, not counting themself. In some cases there were shooters with only 3 in their group so I had to look at the classifications above to count the classes above to find the correct calculation.

This includes shooters that Do Not Finish and DQ’s. We don’t count registered no-shows.

Second place finishers must beat 10
Third place =15 and so on until you run out of places and shooters.

FWIW. Just a report from the trenches.

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Thanks for the report.
If IDPA is changing/has changed their formula it would be great if their office reached out.

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If you ever have any questions, I can facilitate the answers.

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Rick,
Sounds like Practiscore didn’t get the new rule book rules built into the app.
I was told by IDPA HQ that the match bumps should always be pushed through the IDPA website and before publishing it on there, to verify manually because you also need to ensure you delete any no-show’s.

Plus ensuring that all competitors are members and have the correct classification is a huge tasking with IDPA for major matches - When I have run major matches, it takes me several days to complete this task… then the day of the match, I have learned to confirm everything by doing a “Rangelog” export and import that into the match on IDPA’s website.
Doing this during your match will help ensure you have the correct match bumps and proper number of awards presented in each div/class.
Unfortunately, it’s a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way several times since 2017 when I ran my first major.
USPSA makes this super easy to allow the stats officer to push a button that dips the USPSA database to ensure all the classifications are correct the day of the match.
Unlike IDPA, at a USPSA major if you’re not classified; well, you just don’t get eligible for awards unless you’re the DC.

Both sports have a lot to learn from each other… especially helpful if the sport as a whole would spend a bit of money to support this FREE application (neither of them do).

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The report on PS is convenient to assist in letting competitors know they earned a promotion when they are called up for their awards. And when scanning through it at the award ceremony, there were errors that I double-checked later after the match and reported up here.

The database on the website is the ground truth for the official promotions and the tools online assist the uploader in completing that final chore after a match. The safest way to get that done correctly is to already know who should be promoted so you can check their names in the final scores.

The one-button update is something that I attempted to have created 5 years ago for this task and it was never implemented. Perhaps in the future.

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@Mark_Compton maybe let IDPA HQ know to post their member’s, expirations and classes list for updating from the app. It could be done without publishing all member names.

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I’m not sure they know how to do that.

The process that I’ve done is pretty ugly.
Export all data from PS website.
Open in Excel.
Filter by division and copy to another CSV file the Member Numbers only with a header as “IDPA Member Number”. I name the files based on the division.
Go to IDPA’s website.
From the “Dashboard” scroll down and find the button for “Member Lookup” - this is different from the button at the top for “members”.
Click the browse button and find the CSV file for the division.
It’ll then give you a means of downloading an xlsx file with those shooters.
This will then show ALL of the info for that shooter - membership expiration, and all of their classifications.
Once I’ve done all of them, I combine them into one spreadsheet - one tab for each division.
In each tab, I hide all other divisions - this is handy in case someone wants to change divisions - you can simply cut and paste the row from that tab to the tab that they moved to and it’ll show you that info.

Then I have to manually go through each entry and verify that their membership will be good at the date of the match along with the classification for their division. I highlight everything that will be a problem at the time of the match.

I do this starting a month before the match which allows me time to message folks to fix their issues… again, this is time consuming as this is the Match Director’s responsibility to ensure everyone is a member the day of the match before they start shooting, and they have a current classification the day of the match. Without this, you’ll have a repeat of the 2014 GA State IDPA Championship where they allowed expired membership to shoot.

Then on match day, to ensure that nobody’s classification got changed in the past few days… rangelog export and attempt to post the scores to IDPA. If there’s any bumps - MM to SS for instance, the system will flag that entry and you can fix it before publishing final match results.
Otherwise you’ll have an issue where IDPA requires you to still do a MM 1st place to the guy that was classified as SS and the MD didn’t catch it in time… this happened to one of my matches and it wasn’t caught until 2 days after the match.

If only IDPA would permit PS to dip their database to update this sort of thing :slight_smile:

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No doubt it is convenient. However, I have seen so many times due to the discrepancy of the report to not trust the report and do it yourself because PS didn’t have the updated calculation written into their app.
What’s the phrase??? “Trust but verify”. Too much reliance on faulted tech gets us into trouble at an inconvenient time.
You saw the issue and you did the math before proceeding.

I have also not acknowledged any match bumps during awards as if the official IDPA results in someone not getting that bump when we told them. How disappointing to be told you got a bump at the match when IDPA site says you didn’t.
:frowning:

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Get their people to talk with our people…

If they already publishing some spreadsheet files for you, it won’t be much different from publishing member’s info for automatic classification update. Like I said, the member’s info can be anonymized.

PS: I don’t have access to IDPA member-only or MD areas of their website

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the database dip would be nice. PS dips into USPSA which is very nice.

If your membership expired before you’re shooting the major; you’re simply eliminated from awards.

If you’re not classified for the match, you’re not eligible for awards.

USPSA relies on the shooter to make sure their stuff is together. IDPA pushes this responsibility entirely on the MD or designated staffer… this is additional stress that should be avoidable.

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The OP here is the Eastern Regional Director of IDPA… If anyone can help enable that feature with PS, it would be him.
I hope that this does get worked through and makes this a better experience for stats.

When I saw Rick was the stats for that match, I was intrigued that someone that high up in the org was doing such a task. Hopefully Rick sees what MD’s and stats sees now and does what he can to make it better.

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IDPA is going through a process to modernize its platform with a team that is starting out much better than the developers that produced the current system. We attempted this 5 years ago to have a better interface for working with the database. Turns out the structure of the data was poorly implemented and the work was never completed. As the problems are being addressed, this is something that I am going to push to have implemented so the process can be streamlined.I would like to see them create an ACI.

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@Rick_Lund all we need is a publicly downloadable file with membership expiration and classes info. See below. Then we can automatically verify expiration and fill in classes based on provided membership numbers. I’d also suggest to add something like sha2 of the normalized member’s name there to allow to verify if provided membership number is correct.

Please email support@practiscore.com and we’ll give you an example of how USPSA publishes this.

USPSA,PersonNumber,Expires,CARRYOPTICS,LIMITED10,LIMITED,OPEN,PCC,PRODUCTION,REVOLVER,SINGLESTACK
A284,4,12/31/92,U,U,U,U,U,U,U,U
A286,5,2/06/24,U,U,M,M,U,U,U,U
TY290,6,6/30/11,U,U,C,U,U,U,U,U
A292,7,12/31/11,U,C,B,C,U,C,C,C
...
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When I saw that you were stats official for that match, I was curious as to why due to your position in the IDPA. With this interaction, I’m really happy to see that you were and that you’re now seeing what every MD has gone through over the past 10+ years in doing major matches and able to hopefully facilitate in fixing this. Thank you! I truly appreciate it, and I’m sure every other MD out there does too.

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I have been a match director and scoring matches going back to the days when Beach Bunny was a thing.
Ever since tablets became reliable enough to use, I have used Practiscore at every tier-level match. This includes the Postal match in 2020 with over 4000 entries. I have a gun range that runs several sports and a stats infrastructure for majors and this is how I came across the information I originally posted. We are making an effort to improve the current website and process. In fact, I just wrote up requirements for the team to streamline the process using a solution that is already proven.

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thankfully I never had to use Beach Bunny. I heard that it worked well, but you had to replicate hand-written score sheets into it. God help you if the RO/SO had horrible handwriting.
When I was asked to find a different solution by the incoming MD at that club, I found myself at a match that was using PS.
I set out and bought a master tablet and 5 Nook Simple Touch tablets. I set them up and ran them at the next match we had.
Since everyone was distrustful of electronics, we did that first match as paper and tablet. One squad refused to use the tablet and tossed it aside.
We were able to publish the scores within a few minutes of the last shot… minus that squad. The paper sheets were sent to the guy with BB and took him 3 weeks to publish the scores as he was busy with other things like work.

The following match I was asked by those same SO’s to squad with them and teach them how to use it. They found it super easy and we stopped using paper score sheets.

I did find a few years later when someone sat on a tablet and butt-dialed the system into a factory default and the scores were lost.

I contacted Eugene and he said to use a Micro-SD card in all of the tablets and set the scorelog to them. This way if the tablet is damaged, the results could be spun up in MS Excel and replicated to another tablet.

FF to May 2017, the first Sand Gnat Challenge. I had one SO that was problematic with electronics. Staff day, he didn’t follow directions and while waiting, he placed the Nook (in a black case) on top of a stack of barrels. It was nearly 100 degrees. He then tried to use the tablet and it was dead. Darn thing was too hot for me to hold. I put it into a ziplock bag and stuck it in a cooler to cool off. Luckily it came up.

The NEXT day, the same guy dropped another tablet. Then stepped on it and broke it in half… yes… 2 pieces.
I grabbed my laptop and pulled the card from the tablet. I was able to get the scores loaded and replicated them to another tablet.
I was asked on the spot to help with the 2018 Nationals as stats. Unfortunately I couldn’t go.

The fact that you can’t have onboard removable storage on a Frut device is the reason I will never use one at our matches… not to mention their cost.

I’m glad that the IDPA is working toward making this process better… thank you for helping it.