Veckholms-Åkerby 2
SE-745 99  Enköping
Sweden

If you want to score a full-fledge simultaneous event I recommend you have a look at ECats. Magic Contest fully supports the ECats file format.

Having said that, there are ways of scoring simultaneous events in Magic Contest. The basic requirement is that all participants score their events using Magic Contest (1).

The method involves traditional copy-and-paste. The Magic Contest files are pure text files, so it is possible to insert a portion from one contest into a file from another, thereby extending the main file to include names and results from another contest.

Scoring a simultaneous event only takes a few minutes by following the below steps.

Transfer files

Every participant must send their contest files to you. Store them for the time being in My Documents.

One way for the participants to do this is to open the contest and select Contest menu-Send to-E-mail recipient (2).

Another way is to open the contest and select Contest menu-Send to-Magic Contest Outbox. There will now be an .mc2 file in Magic Contest Outbox that can be sent to you through normal e-mail.

File structure

In order to describe the copy-and-paste I need to tell you a little about the file structure of a contest file.

Take one of the files you have received, right-click it, select Open with, and select Notepad. What is shown is approximately what you can see to your right.

Select main file

Select one of the files and make that the main simultaneous file. Right-click this file and open in Notepad.

Change the contest name on line 10,1 into something suitable such as "Simultaneous xxx".

Keep the file open. Now you will start copying data from the remaining contests into the main file.

Insert slave files

Now open the first of the remaining files (=slave files).

Go to line 30,2. Change A into B (and C and D and so on for subsequent files).

Go to line 30,1. Copy everything from line 30,1 to line 30,0 (at the end of the file) including both lines.

Now go to the main file and go to the end of the file. Paste the copied data between 30,0 and 20,0.

Repeat the above for the remaining slave files.

Save main file

When you have copied all the slave files to the main file you can save the file. Then go to Windows Explorer and move the main file into Magic Contest Inbox.

• Transfer files
• File structure
• Select main file
• Insert slave files
• Save main file

(1) If a club wants to participate in the simultaneous event and they use another scoring program there may be a way to save the day.

If they use Bridgemate or some other scoring device that creates Bridgemate databases you can start a contest in Magic Contest and use the Bridgemate databas to close the preparations.

Basically you will use the Bridgemate database to create the slave files yourself. This means that Magic Contest will import the movement from that database after which you can import names and results in the normal way.

(2) This requires that functional e-mail support has been set up in Magic Contest (through Contest menu-Options for all new contests-General and the E-mail tab).

File structure

This is how a Magic Contest .mc2 file looks. Some lines have been taken away for better overview, and some empty lines have been added for the same reason.

[START OF FILE; not part of the file]

* Magic Contest * Pair Contest * File version: 008.013 * Check sum: 10101 *

10,1,2012-05-06,2012-05-06,0,0,0,0,0,0,-1,-1,0,0,xx,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,Sunday barometer

10,2,xx,0,0,0,-1,1,1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,0,0,,0,,SBL 0102 Tapiolan Trikki

... [a lot of numbers and text]

30,1
30,2,0,1,0,0,A

... [a lot of numbers and text]

30,0
20,0
10,0

[END OF FILE; not part of the file]

The file is built around the identifiers on the first two positions of each line.

For instance, the line that starts with 10,1 contains start date, end date, a number of parameters, and the contest name. The line that starts with 30,2 contains a number of parameters and the letter A which is the section letter.