When is a forfeited game rated?
In what way is a withdrawal from tournament different from the forfeit?
Does USCF rate a forfeit as an unplayed loss by the forfeiting player?
A final way to ask the question if still unclear.
Does a forfeiting player risk the loss of rating points? If so when?
Thanks
True, if we are only talking about rule 13D.
At the risk of arguing semantics, a game is ratable after each player has made one move. After that, if a player is forfeited for any reason, the game is ratable.
Why?
Alex Relyea
If the players do make a move, the game should be ratable for any forfeited game. If it was not, there would be more forfeited games. If a player knows they are going to lose the game, the player could resign the game and lose rating points. If the player can forfeit the game without the lose of rating points, the player can pick up the clock and walk out of the tournament room. The player could walk away from the board, and let the flag fall.
There are countless ways a player can forfeit the game, if the games are not forfeited and ratable, more players would do so.
You are using the word “forfeit” in two different ways. In common usage, which I assumed the the orginal poster intended, “forfeit” means a loss without play. Once a move has been played, a game has occurred which will be rated. This game has a definite result (W/L/D). A player can lose the game by resignation, checkmate, or loss on time, which includes walking away and not making any more moves. If we are not assigning the same meaning to common terms, no discussion is possible.
Do understand your point John, but the orginal poster asked when is a forfeited game rated. That would be a question left to the director, the director that Alaskan Bishop would have the most tournament contact with.
Directors do have the right to forfeit, some forfeit more than others, others forfeit when there is no other choice. If the director forfeit a player, the game is forfeited and it is rated. What my standards are, what your standards are, could be the same or different than the director that Alaskan Bishop will have. What Alaskan Bishop should do, is talk with the area director in his area.
You are only highlighting my point. If you use the word “forfeit” in this muddy and imprecise manner, we end up with an interminable and pointless debate.
Any game in which both players make at least one move is ratable. The manner in which the game is decided is completely irrelevant. A game in which either player makes no move can never be rated. This is known as a “forfeit win.” This is not an area subject to TD discretion.
Does this mean that when a double forfeit is reported in the rating report because neither player reported the result of a game, the loss is rated for both players?
No. 29H, “The result, once learned, by the director, counts for rating purposes.”
A different case is when the TD declares the game lost by both players for some gross rules violation (13I). The game obviously cannot be rated, since it has no result.
Only played games with a result of W/L/D can be rated, and (in a rated tournament) all played games with a result of W/L/D must be rated. I can’t see how to put it more clearly.
John, I think you are mistaken. Look at the following:
https://secure.uschess.org/TD_Affil/fileformat.php
You have codes I, R, S at the end of the page, marked as ratable. They are used when the opponent’s code does not correspond.
Mike, can you explain what the basis for those codes is?
That section goes on to say “Reporting of result as inconsistent but ratable should only be used in unusual circumstances. The USCF office reserves the right to decline to rate inconsistent results until a satisfactory explanation of the reason for reporting those results is provided by the TD and to refer any questionable use of inconsistent results to the TD Certification Committee or the USCF Rules Committee for their recommendation.” This is obviously intended a special case of office action suspending the rules. If the system is routinely rating inconsistent results, there’s going to be trouble.
Let’s see if we can’t settle what ought to have been a very trivial question.
P. 260, USCF Rating Regulations.
I didn’t mean to imply that you were mistaken about the original question… 
My point is that you said that only W/L/D is ratable, but this is not the case. I agree that this is only to be used in unusual circumstances. I believe the book may have an example, and a couple of threads have mentioned it.
You yourself just brought to light another possible source of terminology confusion: ‘time-forfeit’.
Inconsistent results should ratable only by special action, at least according to the rules. Obviously you can force the program to do something different (for that matter you can simply change a rating manually as a one-off), but I certainly hope rating reports with inconsistent results are not going through routinely.
The NRS codes (N for win, R for draw, S for loss) are for reporting results that need to be rated inconsistently. I think we get about 2 of those a month, usually resulting from situations where the TD has awarded one player a win and the other a draw for both pairing and rating purposes.
I personally have never had a situation in which I felt it necessary to award one player a win and the other a draw for either pairing or rating purposes, so I’m not sure why they happen, but they DO happen and the ratings system has to be able to deal with it somehow.
I think there has also been one case where we rated a double forfeit as a loss for both players.
Aren’t you being a little fast and loose here? The office really shouldn’t allowing this unless the TD can give an awfully good reason for it. Offhand, I can’t think of any reason that would justify rating an inconsistent result. The few instances I can recall of inconsistent wallchart scores resulted from a TD trying to pacify the players after the TD himself had screwed up.
Personally, I don’t think the rating system should be able to “deal with” such situations – they should require a manual override. However, we should probably ask for the opinions of the Rules and Ratings Committees on this. At what point should the rating system balance flexibility versus consistency?
John, that is how I was instructed to implement it, after input from Ratings, Rules and TDCC.
There have been a total of 24 players with inconsistent results since the new ratings programming went into effect. That means there have been 12 situations in which inconsistent results were reported.
I would personally prefer to have this be an office override only, but any time I’ve proposed something that requires review by the office I get bombarded by e-mails from TDs who want to be able to complete their events without any office intervention and complaints if it takes the office more than a single working day to do that review.
In fact, I got an e-mail from one TD over the weekend who was upset that there wasn’t anyone in the office to take memberships by phone on Saturday mornings. (I’m not sure if this was influenced by the online interface being down for about 8 hours on Saturday due to a problem at our network service provider in TN.)
TDs who pull something like this deserve to have their tournaments held up, and maybe their TD certification as well, but clearly it’s not your fault.
About the only reason I can think of for an inconsistent rating result would be to punish both players for some flagrant rules violation, but whether the rating system should be used for this is very questionable.
Well, as I said before, I’ve never had a situation where I would have used it, but apparently several NTDs are know for this type of ruling.
I doubt it’s the sort of approach that would occur to a lower-certified TD.