Hi,
I am running a G/60 tournament. If I leave the time limit at G/60 for the players who wish to use a 5 second delay, can I still have the tournament dual rated or must I make it G/55 with the delay?
Thanks in advance
Hank Anzis
Hank,
See rule 5Fa. It clearly states that you can do what you want to do, although you also have the (non-preferred) option of reducing from anywhere to G/55 to G/59 with 5 second delay. Is the rule in the book clear?
Alex Relyea
Mike Nolan may correct me, but I think that one of the directives from the last delegates meeting is that games now are either quick rated only or dual rated. No longer are games regularly rated only.
So G/90 is dual? I just rated something as regular only…
The Ratings Committee’s recommendation, which was not subsequently opposed by the Delegates or the Board, was that all games be rated under the quick rating system, including those slower than G/60. (The Quick system could stand renaming at that point.)
That recommendation is still being worked on, it turned out to have a number of complications with regards to the specifics of implementing it.
One of the suggestions made by the Ratings Committee was to rerate as “quick/everything” all games in our database going back to 1991 as quick. That idea has a lot of merit, but IMHO would create a HUGE number of data issues.
Getting the crosstables data cleaned up enough to go back to January of 2004 was hard enough, going back to 1991 would involve rerating around 175,000 sections, or well over 3 times the number of events in the current rerate ‘window’. Now that we’ve got two ‘backup’ systems, I may be able to run some tests on one of them to see what happens and how many data issues arise, but at 2-3 hours for each month’s worth of events that rerate could take something like 400 hours on the backup server.
I still hope to include that recommendation and the title/norm/whatever-you-call-it system that was approved back in 2003 in the next set of upgrades to the ratings programming, hopefully some time in July.
However, to return to the original question, Game/60 is dual ratable (as the term is still defined), and setting the clocks for G/55 + 5 second delay is considered equivalent to setting the clocks for G/60.
BTW, if this technical mumbo-jumbo interests you, see my related note in the ‘sandbagging’ thread.
The original question was is G/60 + 5 second delay considered dual ratable. Rule 5A makes no mention of dual rating, just what the TD is allowed to do as an advertised time control.
If G/55 + 5 is eqivalent to G/60, is G60 + 5 equivalent to G/65 and therefore not dual ratable?
Thanks
Hank
As I understand the rules, TDs are PERMITTED but not REQUIRED to subtract the same number of minutes from the clock that the time control specifies in seconds in delay mode. Thus G/60 is equivalent to G/55 + 5 seconds.
However, if an event is advertised as G/60 and the TDs permit all clocks to be set to G/60 + 5 seconds, I would think that is still G/60. (One would hope that the rounds are scheduled sufficiently far apart to not cause problems with such a setting, though, since some games could take more than 2 hours to complete.)
And that’s the same for an advertised G/5, right? The TD must add a delay if asked?
I’m not sure where you get the must. It seems that the TD is able to add a delay in a G/5, but not required. Personally, I think that it is a bad idea as G/3 + 2 seconds delay seems to be very different than G/5 no delay, and some players wouldn’t play one or the other.
Personally, I would announce any intention of using delay in a G/5 tournament in advance. For example, with the Jim Berry U.S. Championship Blitz, I announced that the time control would be G/5 with 2 second delay (not sure if the online TLA is still available for that).
Incidentally, and perhaps this should be moved to a new topic, has anyone faced a 14H claim in a G/5 tournament?
Alex Relyea
Yeah, there was an incident at a G/5 tournament that someone said they have to add delay. It was half way through the tournament, and the TD upheld it.
Mike,
Thanks. That does it for me. Round 1 is followed by lunch and then rounds 3 & 4 are 10 minutes after round 2 ends. I have seen some games go 30 minutes late with the delay so that is always a concern.
Thanks again
Hank
G/5 events may have different rules, as I recall the last time they were discussed in the Forums there some general feeling that in a blitz game there must be a minimum of 5 minutes on the clock REGARDLESS of the delay setting.
Whether that’s been codified as a USCF rule or not is uncertain. (That may be something worth bringing up at the workshops in Cherry Hill.)
Moreover, the organizer always has the option to declare up front that delay settings MAY NOT BE USED, though I doubt we have many organizers who would stipulate that.
The Tim Just Rulebook Scholastic did state on the website and flyers that no delay would be used. I don’t remember if it had a TLA, but if it did then it was stated there as well.
Only if “up front” means “in all pre-tournament publicity”. Otherwise, a 5-second delay is standard for regular, 3-second for quick.
For blitz, when WBCA folded, then-ED Bill Goichberg announced that, in USCF-rated blitz, the omission of the standard 2-second delay need not be announced in pre-tournament publicity (an announcement at the tournament would suffice).
Not sure about that, but it seems a bit extreme to take off 2 minutes in blitz if there is a 2-second delay. It’s also legal to take off up to 2 minutes. A 1-minute reduction in blitz seems more appropriate to me, e.g. G/4 d/2 or G/5 d/0. Better yet, G/5 d/2 or G/6 d/0.
Bill Smythe
The extreme case would be G/0+5, and I’ve not seen much support for making that ratable.
Someone needs to draw a line, if only so others can argue its placement. 
Yeah, it would be good to draw a line somewhere, so we can have fun having arguments.
Since the standard delay for blitz is 2 seconds, I would think that deducting more than 2 minutes (as in your G/0 d/5 example) would be clearly illegal, even if the organizer decides to have a delay greater than 2 seconds.
Maybe that’s one edge of the (currently thick) line.
Bill Smythe