The USCF office received the following email earlier today:
What’s the biggest problem with this request?
Oh, I don’t know. You didn’t tell us how many players were in the event, nor against which opponents the player in question was paired.
If the player in question played the same opponent four times, I can see why it might look like a match to the validation software.
If many players played the same opponent four times, it would look even more suspicious.
If “the same opponent” in the above paragraph is the same for each of the “many” players (e.g. if one player played 32 games, four each against eight opponents), then of course it would look still more suspicious.
Or was it, to quote Monty Python, something completely different?
Of course, there is another problem also. The event was (presumably) advertised as USCF-rated, yet the games involving Mr./Ms. House were not included in the report.
Bill Smythe
The section as entered had 3 players and 4 rounds. It was sort of a quad, except that players 2 and 3 played each other twice. Player 3 is the one for whom the match rules error was reported.
Wow!
Alex Relyea
If those were casual side games against a player just to fill the time then I wouldn’t have a problem with that. That timefilling could be a serious but known-to-be non-rated and non-counting game, a series of blitz games, a game of bughouse where each player played both boards of their one-person partnerships, or even scrabble or cribbage.
Since they were entered varying as either full-point, half-point, or unplayed, that indicates that the results of those games actually affected the standings and thus really counted in the tournament even though they were not rated. THAT is a problem.
The problem is that “The House Player’s games are not being reported”.
To report these games:
- Create a non-member ID in the membership area of the TD/Affiliate site (if USCF ID does not already exist)
- Upload the tournament; the non-member or expired member will cause an error
- Click the button for Membership Exception Requests, which is at the bottom of the edit tournament form.
- Select “house player” and type the circumstances in the box, save, and submit the request.
If the non-member meets the guidelines then their participation will be approved. Be prepared to pay $15 for a three-month membership if the USCF determines that you were just trying to get around membership rules.
I just recently used a non-member house player in order to avoid byes. This was my first experience doing so. I plan to use the option again when byes cannot otherwise be avoided. I will also keep inviting this non-member to join the USCF. I am hoping that having a rating (and tiring of not playing most of the time) will entice him to join.
On a few occasions I have had four players show for a four-round tournament. Each time I was able to obtain agreement to change the format to a quad.
The match rules call for use of the most recent published rating, rather than pre-tournament rating, right?
Perhaps match rules are too stringent. I had to tap-dance around a “match” that took place at our club when we had a night of “rated games for whoever shows up on time; format to be determined based on entries and who plays.”
Three guys showed up, including me. The other two guys wanted to play the faster end of Quick Chess, so I sat out. They played three games at G/10, which I knew would be coded as a match, but never thought twice about it. (They were rated 200-some points apart.)
Turns out Player A had a provisional Quick rating—though both had long-established Regular ratings and Player B also had an established Quick rating…so the event failed validation, as Player A was not match-worthy, per USCF regs, since his Quick rating was provisional.
I figured a way around that, but it took awhile for the light to dawn…
Can’t you just talk to the office and explain the circumstances? I know that if you have a tournament, but only two players show up, then it’s not necessarily a match. I thought a match had to be intentional.
Alex Relyea
So, SysAdmin, were the three of us (Jeff, Eric H, and I) correct – i.e. was the problem that the tournament involved both members and non-members, with only the member-vs-member games reported to USCF?
Or, did you want us to try to figure out why the validation software considered this event to be a match? (That might be an interesting question, but it seems only you would be able to answer it.)
Or, are you waiting for more replies from more posters? Certainly, this “teaching moment” type of thread could be extremely useful to just about everybody.
Bill Smythe
The reason it was flagged as a probable match was because of the two games between player 2 and player 3. Since there were only three players listed (because the house player was left out), multiple games between two of them turns this into a probable match under the expanded definition of a match. (The Board was supposed to review the updated match rules last November, they were approved for implementation by the ED last fall. That review is on the agenda for this weekend’s meeting.)
The match rules use published ratings because that’s what’s readily available on-site (assuming the TD has the current gold master file) and what USCF rules state all events must use for pairing purposes unless announced otherwise in advance. In a case where a player has a provisional published rating but an established current rating (at the time the match is held), the TD can request a waiver of the match rules limitation from the ratings department.
But you’re right, the biggest problem with this event is that a TD CANNOT submit an event where some games are rated and others are not. The games against the house player need to be included as rated games. (See item 1 on page 260 of the rulebook.)
This issue comes up at least once a month at the office (and that’s just the ones we catch), and it seems many TDs do not understand what page 260 says.
Hence, the ‘teaching moment’.
These are the sorts of issues that Tim Just used to bring up in his ‘TD Tips’ column and Nancy Evans used to put in her ‘Bits & Pieces’ column, too. With the discontinuance of the printed rating supplements, there has not been a place for that kind of instruction.
Rules issues like this come up in the Forums from time to time, but many TDs don’t read the Forums, and that probably includes the ones most in need of enlightenment.
Although Tim has offered to restart his column, and has even submitted one or two of them, the USCF has not chosen to make this a recurring column on CLO or find another place for it.
Yes, but the oft-quoted “talk to the office” is not as easy to put into practice in real life as one might hope. I strongly suspect that is not the fault of anyone who works—actually, physically works—at the office in Crossville. (Joan DuBois is one of my heroes.)
Mike, if the EB discusses match rules this weekend, could you please use this is.gd/UR4B3z as an example of how current match rules can be too strict—especially for players with long-established Regular ratings but provisional Quick ratings.
Do we not wish to encourage QC participation? Sandbagging is not really an issue in QC, since no one uses Quick ratings for big-money events—not even the few QC events that award (relatively) large prizes.
The BINFOs on this issue are interesting. Something clearly caused someone on the RC and/or EB to distrust match results in general. Precautions against ratings manipulation in matches might be a good thing—but the flip side is it also affects spontaneous QC events at club level between honest players, with no prizes at stake.
That disconnect should be easy to fix.
It might be best not to clutter up the discussion of match rules with the regular/quick ratings issue, which has its own volatile arguments.
The ratings committee would use mathematics, but the main reason that provisionally rated players are prohibited from playing in matches is probably that it reduces the number of opponents that are used to ‘establish’ a new player’s rating, possibly impacting the reliability of that number. (In the extreme case, consider a player whose entire 26 games while provisionally rated are against the same opponent.)
It is worth noting, though, that while the old +/- 400 point provisional rating formula used to be used for the entire time a new player was provisionally rated, since 2001 it has only been used (and then with other factors) until the player has at least 9 rated games. However, a player is still considered provisionally rated until after he or she has played 26 games.
The reason for the expanded match rules is not really related to the provisional ratings issue. It is because of a growing number of events that appear to be designed to circumvent the match rules, such as an event where two players play multiple games against each other, plus one game against a third player so that it is no longer a two player event.
By contrast, consider a local club where as few as four players play QR chess against each other for an entire evening, winding up with something similar to a quadruple round robin. That would NOT be considered a ‘probable match’, because all of the players have multiple games against multiple opponents.
Some of these match-like events have been used to manipulate the ratings of one or more players. By requiring these events to be treated as matches, the players fall under the limitations established some years ago for matches: no more than a 50 point gain or loss in one event, no more than a 100 points in ratings gains or ratings losses over a 180 day period and no more than 200 points in ratings gains or ratings losses over three years.
The office also has the discretion to treat other events that appear to be flaunting the match rules to manipulate the ratings system as matches for ratings purposes.
Yes, that would seem easy enough – something like:
- If, by virtue of the time control, the match is regular-ratable, then require an established regular rating.
- If, by virtue of the time control, the match is quick-ratable, then require either an established regular rating or an established quick rating.
- If, by virtue of the time control, the match is dual-ratable, then require an established regular rating for the regular part, and either an established regular rating or an established quick rating for the quick part. (If there is only an established quick rating, rate the match as quick-only.)
Bill Smythe
This would not only be a programming challenge, it would create a situation where the time control itself did not unambiguously determine the rating system to be used.
But why create additional and more complicated rules when the office has not seen even a half-dozen requests for matches between provisionally QR-rated players in the last two years? If at some time the number of such matches increases to the point where we are seeing requests for manual overrides frequently, then it would be worthwhile to look into changing the rules or automating the process further.
Provisional Quick ratings start off with a default factor of 10 x Regular rating, with the player’s first QC game counting as “game 11” I believe. If you play 16 honest games to gain an established Quick rating, even against the same opponent, I don’t see a problem. In fact, it might make the player’s initial established Quick rating more accurate, since the opponent cannot be more than 400 points ‘distant.’
The point: I understand the tightened match rules for Regular-rated matches. Even there it could cause headaches for honest players who just wanna play lots of rated chess and do so against the same opponent most of the time…but I understand the point.
For Quick Chess I do not understand it. Let’s say two players decide to manipulate their Quick ratings by playing Quick-rated matches. What does that accomplish? Nothing. Maybe one of them has the “satisfaction” of seeing an artificially high number next to his QC rating on MSA. Wow.
There is no QC event I know of that awards cash prizes worth the effort to sandbag—and if that happened, the event would almost certainly use Regular ratings for prize purposes.
Just apply the match rules to Regular or Dual matches and exempt Quick-only games/matches. That is the dream that is Rome here.
Two things. One, the initial quick rating calculation isn’t quite correct. For players with established regular ratings, or regular ratings based on 10 or more games, then the initial quick rating will be the regular rating based on ten as stated. If the player has played fewer than 10 regular rated games, the quick rating will be the same as the regular rating. This is why you see new players from the old days where dual rated tournaments had to be rated twice after their first tournament with regular ratings based on 5 and quick ratings based on 10.
Two, if we’re ever going to make quick ratings mean anything (and why have them if we’re not) then we can’t officially depreciate them in any way. As I have said, I know that I am one of very few TDs who does quick tournaments with pairings and prizes based on the quick ratings. I have two such tournaments coming up with a total prize fund of $1200 (GTD) so Mr. Mark’s assumption of a lack of significant prize money is well founded.
Alex Relyea
Hmm, that’s true. So I guess the requirements for a dual-rated match would have to be the same as for a regular-rated match. In other words, require an established regular rating.
If this means dual-rating a match for a player without an established quick rating, no big deal. One could argue that that might pollute quick ratings a bit. One could also argue the opposite, since regular ratings (from the player’s established rating) would be fed into the quick system.
By this do you mean that there shouldn’t be quick-rated matches at all, or that they should be allowed only for players with established quick ratings? (I could see either position.)
Bill Smythe
Another possibility would be that to have a dual rated match, one must have an established regular rating AND an established quick rating.
That would be simple, but I would hate to deprive the players of the right to have a G/45 match regular-rated just because one of them didn’t have a quick rating.
Bill Smythe