Forgive me for not knowing this if it should be common knowledge, but I only recently got into competitive chess. This year is the first year my college has had a chess club and we were collectively wondering what the standard is for number of players on a team. The other officers and I are trying to organize our group of unrated players into a depth chart of sorts and were wondering just how far down we really need to go. We currently have 22 members, but if a team is generally made up of 4-9 players there is no sense in ranking all 22 of us. I was looking at the collegechess.org crosstables for the online team tournament and the highest score any team had in any round was 4.0 which makes me think it was teams of 4, but I would like confirmation on this or any other information on team competitions.
The norm for most team tournaments and chess leagues in the US is four players plus one or more alternates. Check out/Google the University of Pittsburgh chess website and you will find details on how the Pittsburgh Chess League is set up. There are a number of crosstables.
If you are planning on playing in a League, collegiate or otherwise, have plenty of alternates for each team you enter. Playing in other team tournaments such as the US Amateur Team (held in Feb.) or the Pan American Collegiate Team Ch. (held in Dec.) requires only four players. You should check with the organizer if they allow alternates to play.
Team chess is a lot of fun. Check with your school to see if funding can be made available for your activity. Many schools apprpriate money out of student activity fees to various clubs. When I was in college many moons ago, we raised money for the Pan Ams by holding tournaments, simuls, and by hornswoggling the school and student government into thinking we were quiet studious types who could never get into trouble. I can tell you stories, well… lets not go there; I am not sure the federal statute of limitations has passed yet. In any event, some club funding may be available but you may have to work hard to get it.
Pure team competitions typically have 4 players and 2 alternates per team, per competition. Many, including the Pan-Ams, permit multiple teams from any one college.
Some tournaments are combined individual/team events. That means players compete individually and team awards are based on the scores of the 3 or 4 top-scoring team members. These events usually don’t limit the number of players a “team” may enroll.
There is “sense in ranking all” club members, assuming you are talking of developing a ladder system. From experience I can tell you that you will be repeatedly disappointed if you try to rely on just a handful of “loyal” players for all your competition needs.
College chess players are notoriously unreliable. When competitions arise, college students – usually the best ones – find copious scheduling conflicts. Family and church affairs, work schedules, exams and class projects due tomorrow, other school and social events, dating and horomones.
I’ve been organizing and managing our college chess club and teams for more than two years now. Getting any four or more college students to the same place at the same time is quite demanding and challenging. Believe me, it’s like trying to shovel frogs into a wheel-barrow.
You’re going to need all 22 or more if you want to consistently compete in events.
Darrell Cook
USCF College Chess Committee
Chair, Membership Subcommittee
I would think that you can have as many people on your team as you want. You can call the extras alternates or water boys, or towel boys, or cheerleaders, or whatever you want. i would think it would really take the pressure off knowing if some one doesn’t make it that a replacement is ready. Plus extra people to practice with might make it more fun.
here’s a link to a pretty cool team and league i found.
If you check that team out and the links to the other teams in that league you might get some more cool ideas than just how many players to have. i personally have secret fantasies of someday playing for the scorpions.
My main advice would be to just try and get at least one hot college girl on your team! That just makes it more exciting for some reason for me. Don’t ask me why but when a hot girl plays chess seriously it really gets me going! For me that’s like 100 times better than going to a strip club!
It makes a difference whether the event has team vs team pairing or individual pairing with aggregated team scores (like at spring nationals.)
In team vs team pairing, the alternates don’t play in that round, in individual pairing everyone plays (assuming there’s an even number, of course.)
I think I’ve seen some events where the unpaired alternates were put into a separate section and allowed to play a game in that round for rating purposes but not one that affected either team or individual prizes in the main event. As someone who was an alternate on a team vs team event in his first USCF rated tournament, that would have appealed to me, as it was I spent over half of that event playing Risk with the other alternates in the skittles are.
In the Pittsburgh Chess League we have 4-player teams and pair the extra alternates in USCF-rated games. We try to pair players of similar rating, avoiding those on the same team or those who have played in earlier rounds as much as possible. If the alternates finish quickly, I can often get them several rated games
In any event, some club funding may be available but you may have to work hard to get it.
