For those who were not at the Delegates Meeting or the EB meeting on Sunday evening, several changes will be coming in the future.
First, the Delegates authorized the creation of a separate Blitz rating system for events with a total time (MM+SS) between 5 and 10. G3;d2 will become USCF Blitz ratable.
At this time, there is no plan to dual rate (Blitz and Quick) events, so some games (such as G/5;d0) that are currently Quick-only rated will become Blitz-only rated.
Additional information, including when the Blitz system will be available, will be announced soon.
In addition, starting probably with the November issue, Chess Life, Chess Life for Kids and the TLA newsletter labels will no longer include USCF OTB ratings. This will also allow the USCF to change the cutoff date for rating supplements, probably to the third Friday of the month rather than the first Friday of the month. That would mean that the cutoff for the November supplement would be around 11:30 PM on Friday, October 19th, rather than on Friday, October 5th.
How this will affect mailing labels ordered from the USCF office has not yet been determined.
Currently the supplement used for the scholastic nationals in the first part of the month is actually the previous month’s supplement (cut 5-6 weeks earlier).
Several members of the scholastic community leadership were present at the EB meeting when the cutoff was changed, the issue of what cutoff is currently used for national scholastics was discussed, changing the cutoff for Supernationals (which is currently slated to use the March supplement) was not mentioned.
My guess would be that the previous month’s supplement would still be used for spring nationals starting in the first 10 days. I’d guess the last 10 days would still use the current month supplement. The supplement used for tournaments starting between the 11th and the 20th might end up changing from the current month to the previous month so that the supplement used is always created at least a month prior to the start of the event (and might not, I’m not on the scholastic committee so I don’t know which way they’d decide).
Any other tournaments (US Open, IL Open, Midwest Class, Knights of the Forest K-8 scholastic, etc.) would continue standard usage being the current month supplement, with the difference being that the supplement includes later events than previously.
And organizers who advertise it in advance can continue to use the very latest ratings (with the caveat that a re-rating might end up causing the ratings actually used to be ones that no longer show up in the players’ MSA or supplement history).
Any word on when the Blitz rating system will be implemented, and details of how and where the Blitz/Quick line will be drawn?
Once in a blue moon I get talked into directing a QC event, for which we use G/5+3 sec tiebreak game, if needed. Would like to know if that is now Blitz-only, or when the change will happen.
Thanks. BTW, this is the hardest time we have had in many years getting info on the forums about a just-completed Delegates Meeting.
Eric, the informal proceedings of the Delegates Meeting have been available on the BINFO system since some time Tuesday. A copy of that WORD document was provided to our Webmaster on Sunday, when and where it will show up on the website is up to him.
Creating a text-only copy of those proceedings would involve deleting the strike-over text and bolding that was used during the Delegates Meeting to assist the Delegates in following changes as they were being discussed and voted upon.
And remember, the change in the rating supplement schedule was made by the EB on Sunday evening, not by the Delegates, so it wouldn’t be in the informal proceedings anyway.
I’m not sure what you mean by the lines between blitz and quick, that’s pretty clear in the motion as summarized upthread. Any time control with a total time (MM+SS) of 5 through 10 will be Blitz, anything greater than 10 but less than 30 will be quick only. The lines between quick, dual and regular-only will not change.
Some time controls that are not currently USCF ratable (like G/3;d2) will be Blitz ratable.
Some time controls that are currently Quick ratable will become Blitz ratable, but the changeover, whenever it is, will be as clean as we can make it. For example, if the changeover date were to be 12/31/2012, then there would be no Blitz events ending prior to January 1, 2013, and events ending in 2013 that would have qualified to be Quick in 2012 but fall within the Blitz range in 2013 will be Blitz, not Quick.
All players will be considered unrated in Blitz, so their initial Blitz ratings will be based upon their Regular or Quick ratings. The Ratings Committee has not yet voted on that procedure.
With the new supplement cutoffs, players will have to be very careful about which tournament to play in for practice for major events. Now instead of skipping playing in a tournament on say Oct 1-2 before a major tournament in November, they now have to avoid playing playing in a practice tournament until the last weekend in the month. A good result early to the middle of the month can put a class player over the tournament’s rating class line, and well past the entry fee deadlines for the big tournament. Surprise, surprise, you drive three hundred miles and find that you have to play up a section; now you are in the bottom half of a class rather than the top half. This solves sandbagging for the big organizers but should dampen attendance of very active players for local events. Bravo!
Holy Reshevsky, Mike, I was the guy who tried to post that Word doc to the forum. Luckily one of our tech gurus noticed that the formatting did not carry over when it was copied and pasted, so it was not always clear what passed and what did not…so the Wise pulled the post.
I predict confusion over Quick and Blitz. How about a G/10 tournament? Games with analog clocks would play 10.0—Blitz-only ratable, if I understand aright—while games with digital clocks would play 10.3—Quick-only ratable. How would that work?
Also, the last time I remember a motion of this scope being punted to a committee “with power to implement” was the electronic device policy of a few years back. That never got implemented in practice, as far as I know.
Since January 1, 2012, organizers are required to specify the COMPLETE time control, including increment/delay setting. (Do we follow this strictly yet? No, sadly. Look at the time controls published for the US Open, for example.)
So someone running an event at G/10;d3 will be running a QUICK event not a BLITZ event, even after the changeover. Someone with an analog clock only gets 10 minutes of time, that person should buy a delay-capable clock if he/she is seriously interested in Blitz (or Quick) events.
And if the time control is G/10;d0 (which will be a Blitz time control), then it makes little difference whether a digital or an analog clock is being used.
Personally, I suspect most of the Blitz games we get will be at time controls like G/3;d2 or G/5;d0.
Will there be some confusion? Yeah, there will be, there is any time the rules get changed.
We have TDs and players who think the rules printed in the 3rd edition of the rulebook are still in effect, too.
I liked that bright red 3rd edition of the Rulebook. The book was compact. It had clearer explanations of USCF rules on pairings, tiebreaks, notes on prize funds, rules for handicapped players, etc., as well as the revised FIDE Rules of Chess as a separate section. I especially liked the TD checklists section, useful for all TDs regardless of category. There is also a note in the editor’s preface on the use of the word “should” in any rules section, which was defined as must or ought in order to clarify emphasis.
Miscellaneous rambling thoughts about some of the posts in this thread:
How about posting the document to the forums, but throwing in some careful editing before submitting? Bolding can be put back in by hand. Struck-over text can simply be deleted, or printed in red, along with an explanation that red means deleted.
Apparently you have been submitting not only the main tournament games, but also the G/5 inc/3 tiebreak game, to USCF for rating under the quick system. It is not at all uncommon, however, for organizers to declare the tiebreak game not rated. You could simply do the same, if you don’t want to change the tiebreak game to G/5 inc/6 or G/8 inc/3 or something.
Another option would be to re-rate all quick and blitz tournaments, retroactive to January 1, 2012. (This idea could be implemented even if the start-up date for blitz ratings is much later than 2013.) Events originally rated as quick, but not satisfying the new definition of quick, would be de-rated as quick (i.e. removed from the quick system) and re-rated as blitz.
The reason I am proposing January 1, 2012 as the go-back-to date is:
– so it would be easy to figure out which events fell into which category.
No, no, no. The rating system to be used would be determined by the time control in effect for the tournament, not for each individual game. If the announced control is G/10 d/3, then the tournament would be quick-rated, even if some games are played at G/10 d/0 due to obsolescent equipment. (Remember, a clock which can be set for the tournament time control is a preferred clock over one which cannot. A player wanting to use an analog clock can be overruled by his opponent who furnishes a properly set digital clock.)
Are you ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that every quick event submitted in 2012 has had sufficient (and accurate) time control information given to us to decide which of these events could be moved over to Blitz? I’m not.
However, that is an option that the Board and Rules committee could examine further, though it appeared not to have much support in Vancouver.
Having a sizeable database of previously submitted tournaments would, in my opinion, be a GREAT way to kick off the new blitz rating system. The longer this kick-off is delayed, the more true this is.
If there are a large number of older events whose time controls, for whatever reason, cannot be confidently determined, then of course the re-rating idea seems less attractive. If, on the other hand, the number of such events is small, then I think we could all live with the possibility of occasional minor inaccuracies creeping into the initial data.
