Hello!
This may be a strange question, but I am curious: Can you start a small private chess club with 3 or 4 USCF members who want to play round robin rated tournaments amongst themselves once/week? In other words, in addition to playing in larger clubs on certain days, they want to play rated games against each other on other nights. I do understand that one of them would need to become a TD, correct? Is there a problem if they are unrated or provisional?
Thanks!
I don’t see why not, as long as you had a TD and an affiliate. Both of which can be had very easily. It doesn’t matter if they are unrated or provisional unless you wanted to play matches, but as long as you have round robins, you should be fine.
Alex Relyea
If you have a TD and an affiliate then you can run and submit the tournaments.
There may be some questions if you are running multiple round robins for a closed group of players. Mike Nolan may be able to say whether such multiple round robins would really be treated as multiple matches.
If the players are also regularly playing in other rated tournaments then that may reduce the chance that the multiple round robins would be seen as a way to sidestep the match rules.
I know there’s a group that does something like this where I live. I play against them at the regular tournaments, but they talk about meeting up every once in a while for a 4 player round robin at one of their homes at other times. As others have said, as long as you’ve got a TD to submit the scores, why not?
–Fromper
Thanks for the replies! Pretty much as long as you play tournaments and have a TD it should be ok. If both players are rated, then you can have rated matches (according to USCF rules).
Established ratings within 400 points of each other, yes.
Alex Relyea
A series of RRs like quads would probably not be considered matches.
As was noted in a previous thread, it is possible to rate an event even if all of the players do not yet have a rating.
However, those ratings may not be as reliable as predictors against players who aren’t part of that limited pool of players.
New ratings are more reliable when they are against a fairly large number of opponents with existing ratings.
Is it possible to play a round robin with 3 players, or do you need a minimum of 4?
Official rules Of Chess 5th edition, pg. 294 has a RR chart for 3-4 players.
Sounds like a useful book. I think I’ll purchase one at my local retailer. 
4-player RR with a bye each round.
Of course for a 3 player RR you could set up the tables in a little triangle and everyone can play two games at once, e.g. A-B, B-C, C-A. That way you can reverse colors for round 2 and play a double RR without anyone needing to sit out for a round. And yes, I believe this would be ratable!
Chris Bird
Unless something looks like it is an attempt to get around the match rules, just about any way of generating pairings between 3 or more players is ratable. However, an event with something like 10 games between A and B and one game between A and C might be subject to review and could possibly be treated as two matches.
It is also worth noting that if there are more than 2 games between two players in a section (regardless of how the pairings are generated), those players are not eligible for bonus points from that section.
We used to do this at the Lunt Avenue club when 3 players showed up for our Wednesday events. Caution, though – set up the tables not in a triangular arrangement, but in a spoke arrangement. If you use long tables (such as 30 inches by 6 feet), the[b] short /b edges should form a small triangle in the center.
Works for 5 players, too. Set the tables up in a 5-pointed starfish arrangement, so that the short edges form a small regular pentagon.
We never tried it for 7.
Bill Smythe
In Michigan, we call that Concurrent Chess.
I remember many years ago (30+), this was addressed specifically in the good old Chess Life & Review. It was not only allowed but the USCF laws were written specifically to allow this type of small group tournament to take place. The reason is/was simple. There are rather large areas of our country where very few players live and it becomes impossible to have any matches/tournaments with more than a handful of people.