Best practices for establishing a rating for the club TD

Running Chess Tournaments
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I am sure you are all getting tired of my endless questions, and I thank you for taking the time to read and respond to them anyways.

According to the database, there are only 2 TDs in Alaska, and I’m one of them. Both TDs in the database have never run a tournament. (My first tournament is coming up in about two months for a scholastic event with about 20 students.)

I am trying to lean forward for the long haul. I am thinking of small events that can be done easily in a Saturday with other club members. Done multiple times over the three years before I need to re-up my TD certification. Or perhaps on our club nights having one round each night for a month or so. This can be problematic, as I can only go to the club every other time, and several of the club members also do not always show.

I have only ever played in one tournament, because it was the first tournament in our city for the past 17 years, last year. So I only have 6 quick rated games under my belt.

I see the provisions for the playing director in rule 21E. I would prefer not to play in bigger events, such as 16 or more people, because I want to do a good job being a TD.

I was thinking about hosting smaller events so I could establish a rating. Here are my questions that I’ve been searching for, but have not yet answered:

  1. What is the smallest tournament I can host? E.g., I see Quads, but those are listed as if they are sections of a larger event. I see round robins, but for Swiss tournaments I believe the rule book said 6 people.

  2. Rule 21E recommends another TD to rule in the event of a problem between my opponent and myself. If there is none, can I just pre-choose another player to handle that responsibility?

I’m not that great of a chess player, so I would almost rather just take my opponent’s side in any dispute, to rule out favoritism, as my chess ratings are not worth fighting over.

  1. Per Chapter 7, General Qualifications, point 2, it says the TD should have an established rating as an over-the-board-player. I noticed in earlier forum posts from 2004, people said that they had to be Regular, not Quick ratings. I can’t find anything about that officially, will Quick be acceptable? Or do I need Regular ratings? I wish that I could use correspondence ratings, but I feel pretty sure that does not count as OTB.

Being in the heart of Alaska, it is 1500 miles to the nearest tournament, and you have to go through Canada, or fly to get there. It is not easy for me to go to another event. I see a great need for TDs in Alaska, and I feel like with some guidance I could be a good one, just trying to sort out what is the best way to establish my own rating.

Any thoughts on best practices?

Thanks!

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A certified TD who is authorized to submit events on behalf of the sponsoring affiliate can submit events as small as a single game between two players, but the ratings fee has a minimum amount of $3 and at 25 cents/game that’s 12 games, which is the equivalent of two quads. The nice part about quads is that the number of quads is determined by turnout, and if you don’t have a turnout that is divisible by 4, you can make the bottom section a swiss.

As to playing in events you direct, it isn’t prohibited, though you should probably lean in the direction of ruling against yourself. Consulting an independent third party is a good idea, IMHO, but as the TD you’re still responsible for all decisions made. In small friendly events, serious ruling disputes are somewhat rare.

As you build a player base, you may be able to convince others to become certified TDs. Not everybody enjoys being a TD, but I can honestly say that the most fun I’ve had at chess tournaments has been in the TD room.

Ratings in a new isolated player pool tend to sort themselves out pretty quickly, but if you have an idea of the relative strength of your unrated players, you can assign them a rating for pairing purposes.

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Do not worry about asking too many questions. That is why this forum exists.

Please note that a number of strict regulations apply to tournaments with only two players due to concerns about matches being abused for rating purposes. You will probably find it easier to build your rating with three player events than with matches.

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Those restrictions may prevent an event from passing validation, but the ratings department can waive them with a reasonable explanation.

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Do events with 4+ players and 3+ rounds. A small event with no cash prizes is fine for a TD who is also a player, but remember the requirement for a TD to be objective.

It sounds like it will be a while before you have to worry about the expected 50 player limit for a Club TD (60 with another Club TD assistant and using a pairing program). If your events grow then moving up to Local will require three regular rated Swiss tournaments that between them total at least 50 players (2 of 16 and one of 18 would do it). Moving up to Local is also where the established rating is needed. Those requirements are for Swisses instead of round robins.

PS Round Robins are events where each player plays all of the others. The 6 player round robin is one of the qualification requirements for ANTD and NTD but round robins can be larger and smaller. One advantage of a round robin is that the pairings are pre-set, so if you run one over a period of weeks and games not played on schedule can still be made up (don’t do this for FIDE norm events though).

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True, but I do see the scholastic events getting larger, if this upcoming one works out. I would just have to limit the events on purpose, due to my lower level of certification.

Our club meets every Tuesday, with about 25-30 people there every time. There are about 50 to 60 people who come regularly, just not every week. I myself can only go every two or three weeks because of life and work and family events (I have 5 children).

When they held the tournament last year, people flew in from Anchorage to play, as it had been years since there was a rated tournament. They were turning people away at the door to keep to the 50 person limit. Unfortunately, then some people didn’t show, or worse, there were some who didn’t get their ID or membership renewed/activated, so I think there was 44 players in the final count. Quite a few people who were turned away could have played but didn’t stick around when they were told they couldn’t join. At least that was my impression, I was not involved other than to play in the tournament.

But, for me, it’s one step at a time. :smiley:
I still have not run my first tournament yet. :laughing:

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So let’s see, best practices:

  1. No tournament is too small. Prearranged matches are problematic, for obvious reasons, but we all understand that there can be tournaments, or sections, in which there are only two entries. When you have only one player of course you have no rated games.

  2. Absolutely not. Only a certified TD should make rulings. Just be sure that you are even more clear than usual offering your opponents the opportunity to appeal. Make sure you are very familiar with the appeals process and, of course, you’ll use the special referee since you’ll be the highest certified TD in the room.

  3. Yes, regular rated, but the point is for the TD to understand the perspective of a player. It is fine for what you anticipate doing, but if you anticipate directing on a larger scale you’ll want to “apprentice” under other TDs which will require travel. Even if you travel just to be a player, drop by the TD room (during a quiet period, of course) and introduce yourself to the staff and ask questions about their experience and philosophies. At least you can recertify as a club TD without an established rating.

Regarding your other post, I think you grossly misunderstand certification Rule 24. That is there to keep organizers who have a tournament that year in and year out always draws 100 to 150 players from hiring a club TD as chief TD. It’s not intended to limit TDs who have a tournament suddenly blow up on them. Players should never be turned away except by order of the fire marshal. Just next year if your tournament draw 80 and you have every reason to believe it will do so again this year arrange for a Local TD from out of state to come and direct it. That’s all. Please, never discourage players from coming to your tournament.

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So I don’t missunderstand you, a club TD can hold a tournament with more than 50 players? As long as it was “unplanned”?

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That is mostly correct. The threshold is 60 if you are using a computer for pairings and have at least one assistant tournament director.

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That is what I thought, but @relyea just said 80 people would be fine, don’t turn people away…

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You might get an alert about directing an event above your certification level, but US Chess won’t refuse to rate the event just because it drew a lot more players than you had planned for. (There are far worse problems to have!)

If it happens repeatedly, then you need to take steps as an organizer to make sure you’ve got TDs with the certification level to handle the expected turnout. If you’re having that kind of success you should be able to qualify for the Local certification.

Also, keep in mind that you will need to get the SafeSport certification soon.

As the late NTD John Hillery once told me, US Chess should be in the business of finding reasons to rate events, not finding reasons to not rate them.

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Thanks, I already took this certification.

I think the biggest delay in upgrading to local TD will be establishing my regular OTB rating. :grin:

But, that is okay, I still have a lot to learn, and really do need more experience at directing smaller tournaments first.

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Look, I’m not making this up. I gave the citation and everything. The phrasing includes, very deliberately, the phrase “expected to draw”. Mr. Nolan is very correct when he suggests that a TD who repeatedly “out-directs” his certification level is working for an organizer who is dishonest in his expectations.

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Almost every tournament has issues come up. More experienced TDs can often handle those issues before they have any effect on the players. Larger tournaments have more issues and thus require more adept TDs.

When I was a Local level TD I ended up being the chief of a 250+ player tournament because the scheduled chief TD was hospitalized from a car accident the night before. I’d already been the floor chief for dozens of tournaments with 150+ players and was quite adept at pairings, but even with that experience and a good staff I was only able to get through the issues by the skin of my teeth (nowadays I would just shrug off those issues and move forward but I was not as experienced back then). The limits are there to avoid TDs from being over their heads when dealing with problems.

Note that the tournament I did was more than twice as large as I was certified for. If the original plan at that time had been for me to be the chief then it would have been a violation, but was not one based on the circumstances. If there had been serious problems with a complaint to US Chess then I might have been penalized for a bad decision but it would not have been increased because the tournament was over-large for my certification level. If a tournament traditionally draws 40 players, or if it in an inaugural event where 40 players is a reasonable expectation, then if it ends up having 130 players it may be noted but is not a violation. Of course, if it is advertised with $500+ in prizes based on 200 players then it is automatically expected to draw at least 100 and thus does violate the limitations.

Get an established regular rating (26 games including at least one non-win and and least one non-loss) and you will be able to take the test to move from Club to Local (the limitations are 100/120 instead of 50/60). Run 10 scholastic events in the 50-120 range and you’d qualify to take the Senior test (limitations are 300/360). If you get Alaska to the point where a Senior is not certified at a high enough level to be the chief then you’ll have a lot of people pleasantly surprised and will be receiving a lot of (well deserved) congratulations. Moving up from Senior to ANTD is more involved and if you reach the point where you have tournaments over 360 players then one possible solution is to split it up by sections and have each section with its own dedicated staff that is within the limitations for the TDs. One example of separate staffs is when the 2011 All Girls National was in the same building at the same time as the 2011 National High School and both tournaments had completely separate staffs and separate ballrooms. They were (correctly) considered separate events even when a couple of players arranged byes in a way that allowed them to play in both events.

As a postscript.
Unexpectedly overlarge tournaments are okay from a size/certification level standpoint even though they are more likely to trigger problems you’d have trouble handling. The Tournament Director Certification Committee (TDCC) does very occasionally receive a complaint about TDs running tournaments expected to be too large for their certification level (not every player will be happy every time and some may eventually file a complaint). Some of the complaints coming to TDCC are from players who don’t understand the rules. Some are from players just trying to be a nuisance (a complaint not made in good faith will lose the deposit). Some involved TDs that made the correct ruling almost by accident (we’ve sent out decision letters denying the complaint while chastising the TD). Some are due to TDs unintentionally making mistakes (which might result in penalties). Some are due to TDs abusing their power (which are quite likely to result in penalties). By the time a complaint gets to TDCC it has escalated to become a matter that the complainant deems to be serious, but even at that heightened level maybe half are denied (even denied complaints are often deemed to be in good faith and have their deposits returned).
If somebody does file a complaint then please treat it as a complaint to be calmly dealt with. The person filing it often thinks it is valid. When somebody came up to me the final morning of a tournament and said they’d e-mailed a complaint to the office I calmly went over things with them and when I was done they opted against paying the good faith fee even though I did not soften my ruling in response to their complaint (it did go to a special referee and that additional level of appeal made it clearer that it was a good ruling). Talking calmly can resolve a lot of issues.

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I was looking for a better thread for this but here kind of works.

I’ve seen four groups of parents at scholastic events.

  1. Parents who know what is going on, have very few questions, take up little of a TD’s time and are easy to deal with.
  2. Parents who don’t know what is going on, don’t ask any questions, get confused and frustrated, and eventually pull their kids from chess because they are confused and frustrated. These parents are easy to deal with because they are invisible but most TDs do not want parents in this group.
  3. Parents who don’t know what is going on and are determined to find out. These parents can take up a significant amount of a TD’s time and some TDs (wrongly in my opinion) consider them a pain in the neck (or anatomically lower). My experience has been that if you talk with the parents (sometimes having to defer the discussion for some minutes so that the tournament can still run smoothly) then you can educate them to the point where they transition into the parents of the first group that do know what is going on and rarely take up a TD’s time. Moreover, those are also parents that often take it upon themselves to look for other parents in groups two and three and clue them in before those parents see any need to ask questions. My rough rule of thumb is that every minute spent answering the group three parent questions directly saves 10-15 minutes where they answered other parents without needing me to do so, and second and third order effects may well mean that eventually each minute spent saved a hundred or more minutes down the road AND kept a lot of parents out of group two and their kids still in chess. Some TDs are annoyed by group 3 parents but that attitude grossly overlooks how valuable they can be.
  4. The parents that really are, and intend to be, pains in the neck (or lower). Fortunately this is a small group and remaining calm will often put them so far off their game that they will give up trying to annoy you.
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Relyea,

I apologize, I realized after reading my previous post that I have given the wrong impression. It was not my intention to doubt your integrity, but rather that I, in my inexperience, was confused by the wording of the rules in the book concerning words like “should” and “expected”. Thank you for helping me better understand the use of those words, and thank you for sharing your years of experience.

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Thanks for the advice! Fortunately, my first tournament with the school is limited to 20 students because they only have 20 students in their chess class/club. But this is good, a much smaller tournament is a good starting place for me to slowly gain some experience. :+1:

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To my knowledge we have never seriously penalized a TD just for directing an event above that TD’s certification level, though some warnings have been sent, often in conjunction with complaints arising from inexperience or improper understanding of the rules. It is probably more likely that the TD might be sent a polite notice suggesting that they should consider moving up to the next level of certification, because such a TD will almost always have more than enough experience to get to that level.

Becoming a higher level TD is a combination of experience and knowledge, and the latter cannot always be gained just by reading the rulebook carefully. Some interpersonal skills are useful, as well, because, as noted, a good TD can often talk an irate player out of leaving in a huff or filing a complaint by calmly explaining what was done and why.

ANTD and NTD require working at specific types of events that aren’t commonplace, especially in underpopulated areas. Most TDs looking to advance to those levels will contact the office or certain organizers to ask to work at such an event.

The late Ira Lee Riddle often put it this way:
A Club TD knows to look in the rulebook. (Sometimes he said a Club TD knows what the rulebook is.)
A Local TD knows where to look in the rulebook.
A Senior TD knows how to interpret rules that don’t quite match the situation.
An ANTD or NTD knows when to ignore the rules and do what is best for all concerned.

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That currently - https://new.uschess.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/tdcertificationrules.pdf - starts with “Except for the club level” [a Club TD] and then continues with “must have”.

So you don’t need to worry about it yet and you’ll have an established rating by that point (the rules for TD Certification in various places explicitly say Quick is different than Regular, which is mostly in the experience credits part, strongly suggesting that established Quick is good enough here. By the point you’re taking the Local TD test you can work it out with the TD Cert group if necessary).

I find low stakes tournaments ($0 to $50 prizes) tend to help innoculate against accusations of favoritism. That, and losing a lot.

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