You suppose wrong on the second point. Nobody’s trying to be atrocious or allow cheap shots.
You asked whether we played unrated blitz because we wanted to use different rules. I answered…but too quickly and in not enough detail. I should know better by now.
In July 07, my co-director took a look at the March 04 USCF Blitz Rules then posted on the USCF site, and made a few changes for clarity to have a set of rules for our own club use. So we ended up with the following Rule 15 and 16:
"15. A legal move is completed when a player starts his opponent’s clock. Touch move rules apply.
If you leave your king en prise and stop your clock, you have made an illegal move; your opponent may take your king and claim a win. If you notice your error before stopping your clock, touch-move rules apply. See rule 7.a.4). "
USCF has since updated its own rules, so I don’t know what the old 15 and 16 said in March 04.
I can say that so far this 15 and 16 has served us just fine for club play, and no one’s playing dirty king tricks. Our phrasing may not be as technically air-tight as USCFs; however, I find it’s working for us.
If you’d like, you can play G/2 hours using blitz rules. The issue is not the amount of time - it’s the rules affecting the balance between what happens on the board and what happens on the clock.
I beleive that this year's and probably last year's World Open G/5 Blitz were quick-rated, and they used something similar to the old WBCA Blitz Rules. The same for the Foxwoods and North American Open Blitz tournaments. What is the rule which prohibits Game/5 from being quick-rated if "blitz" rules are advertised?
Admittedly it doesn’t say what rules you have to use but since the word “blitz” is used and “quick chess” is in a separate category, one might assume that it would be ok to use the blitz rules for these games.
And assuming that was how the event was advertised, shouldn’t it be USCF ratable, in this case under the regular rating system? This would appear to me to be within the acceptable limits of permissible variants in rated play.
At least the blitz rules still have the pieces moving in the same way as the regular rules, as opposed to suddenly appearing on the board. If you want to be a bit sarcastic you could ask to rate the variation where multiple people play alternating moves (which is otherwise played normally), which might end up having an odd number of players that has them alternating between making white and black moves.
There does seem to be a lack of clarity here. This could stem, in part, from the difference between “quick vs blitz rules” and “quick vs blitz ratings”.
It would be a (relatively) simple matter to define blitz as G/3 - G/9, quick as G/10 - G/29, and regular as G/30 or slower. (One would have to define, carefully and precisely, how much deduction is allowed from these when a delay or increment is in use.)
Once blitz, quick, and regular are defined precisely, life becomes simpler: blitz is played under blitz rules, quick under quick rules, and regular under regular rules.
The rating system used has nothing to do with it. At the moment USCF has no separate blitz rating system, so blitz games are rated using the quick system. Likewise, some regular games are also rated under the quick system. None of this should affect which set of rules is to be used.
Remember when we had 1/2K as an option for quick events? Well at the time that could have been used for any event. It was just that there wasn’t anyone crazy enough to run a 40/2, SD/1 event at 1/2K!
Question: If the WBCA rules are to be used, does that include the rule about counting out loud to 4 for a repetition of position to claim a draw?
That was the silliest of several silly WBCA rules. I certainly hope it wasn’t included in the USCF version. For one thing, who is going to be counting “1”? The first time a position occurs, likely the player who creates it is not aware there’s going to be a repetition.
