I’m running my first tournament starting Monday. We are a small club that just started (we have only met 3 times, with attendance of 3, 6, 12), so the number of people coming to the tournament is a little bit of an unknown. The tournament will run on a week night, one round a week.
Since as a club we want to be flexible to attract as many people as possible, I have been thinking of the many types of events that we will need to have. Only about half our current members are USCF members, so we will also be running unrated tournaments alongside the rated ones if there is interest.
Some people can not make it to the club by the start time of the rated tournament, so I was trying to figure out from the rules book and other resources what to do. I didn’t find any mention of a tournament having to have uniform time controls.
Would it be possible, if both players consent, to run lower controls that fall under the same rating category as the rest of the tournament’s games? For example, our main games will be 40/75, SD/30; could some people play G/75? I know that, for instance, accelerated pairing often make use of different time controls. The rule will in any case be that after the 7pm the clocks will need to be set to take into account the already elapsed time, so technically they could be the same time control on paper, if they just agree to be late by the same amount of time.
As far as the Extra Rated Games section of the Tournament Results Report is concerned, can it be used for additional rated games that will not be part of the tournament and possible have very different time controls? I’m thinking of people who come just once a month for a rated game, but shouldn’t perhaps have to contribute to the prize pool for the tournament. I guess I could put them in the tournament with no-shows for the other rounds, and it may help with odd number of players, but I wanted to know what is allowed in the Extra Rated Games section. The rules book only makes a few mentions for specific cases. Also, some kids come to play casual games for the first hour, hour and a half. If only two show up, would it be possible to have them play G/30 games and put it in the Extra Rated Games section?
I’m sure I’ll come up with more questions. before Monday.
BTW, I’m using Vega as the pairing software. If anybody has experience running USCF with Vega, I would appreciate your input.
Sure, why not? If two players walk in late and want to be paired against each other, just tell them you’re willing to pair them only if they agree to play at a faster control. As long as it’s still game/30 or slower, no problem.
You probably won’t need an Extra Rated Games section. As long as all time controls are game/30 or slower, there should be no problem. If you want to prepare a crosstable for your club newsletter, you could have as many sections as you want, while combining them into a single section on the version reported to USCF.
About the only reason for an Extra Rated Games section is if one (or a few) of the players played more games (or had more results) than the stated number of rounds for the tournament. This mainly happens in larger tournaments. For example, in a 5-round tournament, a player may have been given a full-point bye in round 4, but still wants to play a game without losing his bye. In this case, if you can dig up an opponent for him (from another section, or from among spectators standing around), he will have two results for round 4 (a full-point bye and an actual result) and six results altogether in the five rounds. In this case it would be necessary to “create” another section (such as Extra Rated Games) for this player’s actually-played round 4 game.
This sounds a lot like what we do at my fairly small club. We don’t even have the formality of a “tournament” - we meet once a week, and just match players as evenly as possible for rated games. There are no prizes, and we charge adults a dollar to cover rating fees, scoresheets, etc., with kids playing free. Our usual time control is g/75+5, but people can agree to play shorter games.
I’ve used an ‘extra games’ section to deal with cross-round pairings where one player has already been promised a full point bye as well as for playoff games.
However, if there is a two-player playoff and it lasts for more than 2 rounds, it is considered a match under USCF match procedures, even if it is a section in a larger event, and thus is only ratable if the players meet the conditions for a match.
