I wish. Hm. I wonder if there is a way to strangle dual rating as well.
Alex Relyea
Perhaps a better question is should we adopt the FIDE practice of only making rules changes effective every x years - say every five years - so that they can be properly codified and then a new rulebook brought out.
Yes. This. 5 years sounds about right.
Good luck getting the Delegates to agree to this, the FIDE Congress finds ways around their limitation.
So much of what the Delegates do is so poorly worded (Bylaws, Rules) that SOMETHING needs to be done about it. Much of this is comes from attempts to correct real or imagined flaws or broker compromises in proposals by rewriting ADMs between the workshop and the Delegates Meeting, or, worse, rewriting them on the floor of the Delegates Meeting.
Most legislative bodies have rules that require multiple readings of a bill and somewhat limited opportunities to amend them, which gives the legislators and their staff time to study the proposals and perfect them. But those bodies meet more frequently and for much longer periods of time.
One possibility would be to have rules and bylaws ADMS passed at the Delegates meeting be reviewed by an appropriate body with the power to make technical changes, which would then be voted on by the Delegates. This review and vote (by mail ballot) could be done in the time between the end of the Delegates Meeting and January 1st, when most rules and bylaws changes take effect.
Since I think the current Bylaws state that any Delegate who is not present at the meeting is deemed to have resigned, only those Delegates present at the meeting, including any named on site, would be eligible to vote.
As I recall from years of people trying to interpret what to do to implement various time controls, only one organizer and one affiliate was the main support of Game 25, d5 as a regular rateable time control because of special circumstances. The Delegates grudgingly approved of the exception and we out in the hinterlands of USCF chess were advised that in the future anything else less than that for a base time was to be determined as Quick Chess. If you used a delay of d3, it was Quick Chess. Delay of d5 was regular chess. At that time there was no d10, d15, or any other higher delay, nor was increment time being used much.
Unfortunately, since the number 30 became the line not to be crossed because of somebody’s need to create a math formula to confuse things, it allowed for tinkering and lousy Quick Chess time controls like Game 29, d0 so as not to cross the 30 line of demarcation. Therefore, Game 29, d3 became stupidly regular rated rather than only Quick Chess rated. In ignoring the delay time and allowing zero delay we reverted back to all of the worst aspects of the original Allegro time controls and rules, which we were trying to avoid. It also kept a lot more analog chess clocks in the mix when we were trying to convince players to go digital. Any base time under Game 30 should be Quick Chess only, no matter what delay time or increment time an organizer attaches to it to establish or s-c-r-e-w up round times for his events.
Having been at the meetings where the G/25 rules were passed, it may have been one organizer primarily leading the fight, but there was strong support from the entire scholastic community.
I doubt the boundary between regular and faster ratings will ever get rolled back to G/30, even if dual rating is eventually killed off. (But until there are some formall studies of what to do about things like the regular/quick issue, which may now also be a regular/blitz issue, I don’t see dual rating going away, even though quick ratings are pretty much ignored by most players and organizers.)
There’s merit to this as well. I completely agree that many of the problems are created by poorly worded ADMs and attempt to re-write them on the fly. I’m horrified at how many people don’t even try to write something in a clear and concise manner that actually says what they intend. It’s not practical, but I’d love a rule that allows an ADM to be rejected until the delegate has taken the time to actually write it in a way that works.
Tough. The organizer will have to specify the delay like s/he’s supposed to next time. This is a small price to pay to ensure that a player’s reasonable expectation of a delay is met.
Ken Ballou graciously included this provision in the ADM at my suggestion. The rule says what I intended it to say. The rating system a game winds up in is of no concern. The concern is to fulfil a player’s reasonable expectation of a delay when–not if, but when–an organizer fails to specify a delay or lack thereof, as required elsewhere in the rules.
My guess is that this addition to the rules will cause more problems than it solves.
My guess is that I’d rather talk about the other topic, namely, whether the Delegates really ever approved upside-down time controls like G/5 d/25 for regular rating.
I’ve just about given up on my attempt to arm-twist the Rules Committee into conducting a thorough investigation of the Delegates’ intentions, largely because I haven’t had a lot of support, but also because it may be difficult for the Committee to justify either conclusion with any degree of confidence.
So here’s another idea. Remove rule 5C from the Draft, and replace it with one of the following tables – or better yet, with both, so that everybody can compare the options.
Table A is what happens if upside-down time controls are to be considered legal. It is equivalent to 5C as presently worded.
Table B is what would need to happen to make these weird time controls go away.
In both cases mm = main time in minutes, ss = increment or delay time in seconds:
Table A:
[size=150][code]
allowable range minimum recommended
event for main plus allowable increment
type increment/delay main time or delay
regular 30 <= mm + ss 5 minutes 5-30 seconds
quick 11 <= mm + ss < 30 5 minutes 3 seconds
blitz 5 <= mm + ss < 11 3 minutes 2 seconds
[/code][/size]
Table B:
[size=150][code]
allowable range minimum recommended
event for main plus allowable increment
type increment/delay main time or delay
regular 30 <= mm + ss 25 minutes 5-30 seconds
quick 11 <= mm + ss < 30 8 minutes 3 seconds
blitz 5 <= mm + ss < 11 3 minutes 2 seconds
[/code][/size]
No matter which table is under discussion, rule 5C should be removed. In one case, 5C is consistent with Table A, hence redundant. In the other case, 5C conflicts with Table B, hence must go away. Either way, the elimination of 5C would remove a lot of confusion.
Table B establishes the principle that the ss portion of mm + ss can contribute at most the minimum recommended increment/delay to the total, forcing mm to contribute the rest. This IMHO is a Good Thing.
While I have your attention, let me point out a VERY BAD feature of upside-down time controls, which apparently nobody has noticed. Take G/5 d/25 for example:
Essentially, G/5 d/25 is a 30-minute game. Yet, if a player arrives at the board just 6 minutes late for his first move, he has already forfeited the game. Does that help convince anybody?
Bill Smythe
It helps to convince me that G/5, d/25 is a good idea. Show me any other sport or game where you can be up to one hour late for the start of play and still not be forfeited, like you can in chess. Try showing up even six minutes late for a golf tournament and see what happens.
OK, so now you want to overhaul the entire culture of American tournament chess, in order to keep some silly time controls that may or may not have actually been endorsed by the Delegates?
Obviously, late arrivals wouldn’t work in multi-player sports, like golf or football. Auto racing would be an even better example. It works in chess just because it’s a two-player game, and because of the way time is set up to control the action in chess.
This is going to be a tough call for the Rules Committee. They’re going to have to decide which of two possible scenarios is the one intended by the Delegates, and they’ll have to make one of them official policy for calendar year 2018, without even being able to ask the Delegates for clarification until August 2018.
I am hoping that the final Draft will explain both possibilities – perhaps even including both Table A and Table B as above – followed by a statement along the lines of “After careful consideration, the Rules Committee has decided that Table X” [ A or B ] “is the one most likely intended by the Delegates, and will be in effect throughout 2018. We strongly encourage the Delegates to clarify this question in August 2018, so that a clear policy can be implemented effective January 1, 2019.”
Bill Smythe
I don’t think Scott is endorsing g5 d25. He’s saying your argument isn’t very persuasive to him because thinks players should not be allowed to arrive late at all.
I went back and looked through the Minutes. 2008 was when the rule about increment/delay of 16 seconds or longer meaning regular-only rated was approved, the MM+SS method was approved at the 2011 Delegates Meeting as DM11-43 (ADM 11-36)
That motion included a number of examples of time controls but indicated that the list was not complete., but it did explicitly state:
See uschess.org/docs/gov/reports … ENDING.pdf
Blitz as a separate US Chess ratings system was approved at the 2012 Delegates Meeting. DM 12-22A and 12-22B, the latter included updating rule 5C for Blitz to have MM between 3 and 10.
Correct. I agree that G/5, d/25 is kind of silly, but the example given to show why it is silly was not well chosen. Being allowed to arrive up to an hour late for a chess game is something Mr. Smythe believes works in chess. On that point we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
Same thing as when G/5 d16 was Regular-only ratable (not Dual) from 2009-2011 or so. There were posts pointing out the absurdity of that on these forums, but as far as I know no one held a rated event using that control or even close.
If that did happen, anyone who played such an event knew what they were getting into, same as anyone who plays G/5 d25 knows that now.
Where the line should be drawn is a good question. I would likely vote for a motion to make 25 minutes of main time the bare-bones minimum to be Regular-rated. But you could make a case that G/20, Inc-10 is as “Regular” as is G/25 d5.
Allowing G/25 d5 to be Regular-rated at all is pushing it right to the edge. Let the players decide if they will tolerate any further tweaks to that threshold that TDs and organizers dream up.
There have been at least a few dozen events held with time controls like G/45;d16 held, but we were not keeping detailed and standardized time control information until 2012 and didn’t collect it at all until 2005. Most of the section from 2005 through 2011 do not indicate what the increment/delay was, though there appear to be a few with 16 second delay from that era.
The ones in 2012 and beyond were held under the MM+SS version of rule 5C.
Thank you!
In that document, the legality of a time control, as well as the tournament type (regular-quick-blitz), depended heavily on MM+SS, but much less on MM alone or SS alone.
The only requirement for MM alone was 5 minutes or longer.
For SS alone, only four “standard” SS were listed: 30-second increment, 5-second delay for regular, 3-second delay for quick, and 0 for blitz. The language strongly hinted, but did not state outright, that only “standard” SS should be used. Either way, that 2011 ADM legalized G/25 d/5 as regular, but maybe not G/20 d/10, G/5 d/25, etc, depending on how strict your “standard” was.
Well, maybe we’re OK for 2018 then.
For 2019, I’d like to see the MM+SS formula spruced up so that, for each tournament type, there is a specified range for MM+SS, a specified minimum for MM alone, and recommendations for SS alone – and no heavy-handed hints that certain controls may be questionable because they are not on a short “standard” list.
In short, I like Table A or Table B. Preferably Table B, because it does a better job of mollifying some Delegates’ concerns about MM going lower and lower for regular-rated events.
Bill Smythe
For those who want change, the time to start working on this is NOW. Come up with your ADMs, consult with the Rules Committee and make sure you have several people willing to show up and fight for your proposal at the workshops and in the 2018 Delegates Meeting in Madison WI.