Avoid Paperwork

Traditionally, fencing tournaments are run with a single central PC running some fencing tournament software. Such software depended mainly on printouts. For example, printouts need to be made for registration, and any corrections or additionals need to be entered manually afterwards. The same applies to referees. Printouts are made for pool rounds or DE rounds, distributed to the referees, who then referee as they see fit and return filled-out bout/pool sheets that need to be entered into the tournament software.

For some time, there existed only one or two pieces of refereeing software, for Palm OS based PDAs. However, they could only be used as a personal choice by the referees in terms of using it instead of making dashes for points and instead of the provided stop watch. Afterwards the results still needed to be filled in on the pool (bout) sheet which is handed back to the organizers, as before.

The Arbitre refereeing software and the Planche 2010 tournament software introduce a new paradigm. In addition to the traditional way of integrating bouts (and pools of bouts) into tournament software (using printouts of pool/bout sheets), Arbitre introduces a new way of information exchange between referees and organizers. Using Planche tournament software, organizers cannot only note preferences for each referee (possibly certain weapons and/or age groups) but can also distribute the pools (bouts) to the referee's PDA or mobile phone running the Arbitre refereeing software. Referees using the Arbitre software can then, at their choice, either referee a bout without Arbitre and enter the score afterwards, or they can use the simple yet powerful user interface of Arbitre to assist them in their task. The data can in turn be transmitted back to the Planche tournament software.