Say a match between two players lasted over a course of 6 months. A game was played once every two weeks.
What is the best way to submit this? If either player would have played between that time, it may have fluctuated. Should it be submitted in 12 different sections? Is there a limit for the rating?
There may be a rule for this that I don’t know. But in the interest of not allowing people to game the system, I think it should all be rated as of the date the report is submitted. Otherwise, somebody could back-date a result to affect their rating result in a tournament they already finished. I can’t find a compelling problem here, but I’m not sure that there isn’t a serious problem either.
If players want the match rated in stages, they should submit it in stages as the stages are complete.
Stages as in sections, or stages as in tournaments? I just want to make sure it’s fair, but doing it all at onces over a course of 6 months doesn’t seem to be the best option. Plus 12 games over 6 months at $3/tournament doesn’t seem fair.
Stages as in: in January we played 4 games, and we submit that as a 4 game match. In February we play another 4 game “match”. And so on until we decide (or have pre-decided) that our match is over.
What aspect of fairness are you thinking of? Rating fee?
If you’re asking USCF to rate it as separate matches, then it might cover more of the cost of doing it if you pay as for separate matches.
The usual recommendation is that if the games occur over more than (about) a two month period, they should be split up into multiple events. This applies to all events, not just matches.
Some have suggested before to Just have a friend TD tag them on in an extra games section every month and give them the .20 a game.
They would just add a section named “match” to their tournament and submit it.
Just make sure your friend realizes that by tagging those games onto his event he assumes responsiblity for them. Some day that might land some TD in hot water.
Through your capitalization are you attempting to slyly name a TD who might be amenable to this? I’m not so sure he would be.
Bill Smythe
I’ve done this before for local players. But then, I was aware of the match, and verified results. I wouldn’t suggest a TD do this for those matches he/she can’t verify as valid matches.
I’d prefer to rate this all at once, but I wasn’t sure if the way USCF rates these matches, if they’d back date each section or if it was done from the tournament event date.
No I think the problem is Josh can’t type! 
Seriously I would only want to take responsibility for adding such if I truly knew what was going on with the match.
The sequence that events are put into to be rated is as follows:
Event ending date
Event beginning date
Event ID
Section number
Suppose a players competes in four events, submitted in any order.
‘A’ begins 4/1/2007 ends 4/15/2007
'B" begins 4/4/2007 ends 4/5/2007
‘C’ begins 4/4/2007 ends 4/4/2007
‘D’ begins 4/5/2007 ends 4/5/2007
When rerated, these events would be rated in this order: C B D A
After rerating, the player’s pre-event rating for B, D and A would be his post-event rating from the previous event in this sequence. For C it would be his post-event rating from his most recent event before this sequence.
So say that both players are rated 1800, one wins 6 out of 8 games. Shouldn’t a bonus apply?
Per the ratings formula: Bonus points are not awarded in any event of less than 3 games or when two players meet more than twice in that event. As a result, they cannot be awarded in a match at all.
So, if a td sends in a match as a section of one of his events, would bonus points be lost for all the players in the other sections? (Or is the bonus lost only for the players meeting more than twice?)
Each section is rated as a separate event, so having an ‘extra games’ section or a match does not affect bonus points from other sections.
The sequencing of those sections could affect whether bonus points are earned, though, because it will affect the pre-event rating used for each event, which then affects the expected results, which in turn determines whether someone’s performance is worthy of bonus points.
It’s not just a question of “taking responsibility for them”. If the games were played as a match, and not as rounds of a larger event, then they are subject to limitations on rating changes, etc.
On another point - Mike: is there still a recommendation that events longer than 12 rounds be broken up? This was an issue related to the math of the old system which is probably no longer an issue with the new system.
In my opinion, a match which extends over a very large number of games (12 seems like a nice upper limit), or a long period of time (one month feels right, but I might accept 3 months), SHOULD BE broken up into smaller chunks.
But again - in NO case should games played as a match be tacked onto a separate event. There are special restrictions on matches that do not apply to other events.
The revised match rules passed by the Board in 2006 limit a single match to 20 games.
Personally, I don’t mind if in order to save on ratings fees a match is tacked on as a separate section to an event and coded as a match, but that might make it harder to find than if it is coded as a separate event. However, should that be USCF policy?
What if the event is tacked on, not as a separate section, but as a separate series of games in an existing section? For example, a 5-game match could be tacked on to a 5-round swiss by just adding those two players to the crosstable. Is there any way to code individual players as a match?! 
Bill Smythe
Bill, do you want to win the ‘most rhetorical question of the week’ award?