I think it’s a great idea. All we need to do is convince FIDE to adopt the USCF rules.
A little more seriously… I think there are practical reasons why the rules differ. The two factors I’ve heard and read about most frequently since I rejoined USCF are: Chess across the rest of the world is different from chess in the U.S. (How many one day weekend G/30s or G/45s occur in other countries under FIDE rules? Maybe more than I think, but I’d be pleased to be surprised.) The FIDE rules do not seem, to me, to be readily adaptable for weekend, club, or scholastic events - where I think the majority of non-online chess takes place in this country.
The second is the role of your TD: Director, or Arbiter? Perhaps the difference isn’t as great as I imagine, but I am frequently surprised when I read the column of Geurt Gijssen’s column “Arbiter’s Notebook” and see how many times I’d rule differently and check my rulebook (or check with other TDs) and find differences of opinion with Mr. Gijssen. And I’m also surprised about the number of times a question comes from a USA player, and the answer seems to not recognize the USCF rulebook as a source. (Though perhaps the question should be reversed: Why should a US player expect a FIDE arbiter to know USCF rules…)
Another way to think about it: If it were that simple to “merge” the rules, why aren’t we already doing it?
But I strongly suspect “merging” the rules would be equivalent to “let’s adopt FIDE’s rules!” And I don’t know how comfortable I am with that, personally.
It is exactly these types of differneces that we should try to eliminate. The reason you, and other TDs, would rule differently from (perhaps the current most famous Arbiter) Geurt Gijssen is beacause of the differences between the two sets of rules. This divergence is just plain bad and should be fixed. I’ve already ran into multiple foreign players who have no idea what our provincial “time delay” concept is, among many other USCF rule quirks.
I never said merging the rules would be simple; in fact I stated the opposite. But I think we have to do it someday, so why not start now? Remember the virulant opposition to switching to algebraic notation? Now, it’s no big deal. Most players now can’t even read descriptive (I recently used descriptive in a game jsut as a psychological ploy; it worked!). Anyway, we should standardize before we end up being irrelevant.
How are the USCF and FIDE different regarding time delays? I agree with you that most of the differences that I understand are of no great consequence and that standardization is better than whatever advantages the USCF way of doing things might have. In my opinion, the FIDE way of doing things is better, or at least, not worse. It shouldn’t be any problem at all to switch to the FIDE rules. But it will be. The USCF have gotten to be the way they are because at some point a majority of USCF Delegates thought the USCF version was superior, or else the USCF version was the compromise between two camps. Even now, the USCF Scholastic Council has different rules for the national scholastic tournaments, and will never agree that these differences are anything but all-important. Anybody who thought differently would brand himself as having no understanding of special scholastic circumstances. Similarly, the USCF differences with FIDE are supposedly driven by the prevalence of weekend Swisses in the US – as if no other country in the world has Swiss tournaments, or if they do the tournaments are all held during the week, which of course is completely different than weekends.
FIDE doesn’t recognize delay, or Bronstein which is practically the same thing (yes, I understand that it looks different). FIDE recognizes increment, or Fischer, preferably 30 seconds.
FIDE uses increment rather than delay. As an organizer and tournament director I prefer delay because it makes round times more predictable.
I think one reason FIDE prefers to use increment is that with a 30 second increment the players have to continue keep score no matter how little time is left on the clock. Otherwise, if the players stop keeping score the arbiters are supposed to do this, which could be difficult if there were too many players for the number of arbiters.
6.2 of FIDE Laws of Chess describes both “delay” and “increment”. The “time delay” mode that is described in 6.2 seems the same as USCF time delay. The FIDE Laws of Chess mention no specific time controls; as I said above FIDE has different documents governing tournament organization, the rating system, title and norm requirements, etc. If the USCF wants to standardize different time controls than FIDE uses for its tournaments, then that is not an issue between the FIDE Laws of Chess and the USCF Official Rules of Chess. This issue is an example of why tournament organization details should be separate from the rules governing play.
It is perhaps more accurate to say that FIDE does not recognize delay time controls for norm tournaments. In fact, according to Article 1.11 of section B.01 of the FIDE handbook, any tournament which offers norms must use one of the following five time controls:
40/90 SD/30 inc/30
40/100 20/50 SD/30 inc/30
40/120 SD/30
40/120 SD/60
40/120 20/60 SD/30
(Note that the time control of G/90 inc/30 listed in that section is no longer valid for norm tournaments as of the end of 2010.)
Also note that norm tournaments are limited to two rounds per day and a maximum playing time of twelve hours per day (assuming a game of sixty (60) moves).
1.14 The tournament must be played by using one of the following rates of play:
90 minutes with 30 seconds cumulative increment for each move starting from first move
90 minutes for 40 moves + 30 minutes with 30 seconds cumulative increment for each move starting from the first move
100 minutes for 40 moves followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for the remaining moves with 30 seconds cumulative increment for each move starting from first move
40 moves in 2 hours followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game
40 moves in 2 hours followed by 60 minutes for the rest of the game
40 moves in 2 hours followed by 20 moves in 1 hour followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game
This time control was argued in favor of at the Khanty-Mansiysk Congress and thus was allowed to stay until the FIDE Congress in Istanbul (2012) where it will be discussed again.
