Scenario: Two chess clubs (both USCF affiliates), play a rated match (for now I mean ‘match’ in the informal sense, my question is to determine whether it should be rated as such).
Paired by rating - highest rated player from club A goes against highest rated player from club B, etc. Each pairing plays 2 games (one with White, one with Black). G/60 + d/5
Club A brought 10 players, club B has 11. It was decided that the bottom two from club B would face the same opponent (club A’s bottom board), and just play 1 round each.
Club A has two masters, but also has some 1100 rated players. Club B has no masters, but their lowest players (who showed up for the match) are 1600.
How should this be submitted?
If it is listed as a ‘match’, would that entail submitting one tournament with 11 sections? What about the 400 point rating difference that is violated at the bottom board - is that a hard limitation, so that it can’t be submitted as a match?
Can I submit it as a Swiss (which just very weird pairings)? I’m sure the online submission will generate a ton of warnings, but would it actually prevent it from being rated?
I did search for the answer and found this thread, but doesn’t exactly address the situation so wanted to be sure I do the right thing.
Scott, before people start jumping in with their answers, let me ask you a very important question:
Why do we have match rules in the first place, ie, what goals do they serve?
I think any answer which does not start with those goals and then go into how they apply in specific situations (especially ones not explicitly covered in the rules) is likely to be incomplete and seem arbitrary to some people.
I believe match rules were put in place to make it harder for unscrupulous people to artificially raise (or, I suppose, lower) their rating.
If I am reading your reply right, you seem to be implying: Although an event can look like an instance of C, it does not have to follow the rules for C so long as it wasn’t done with the intent of doing the sort of thing the rules for C were created to prevent in the first place.
(One or more posts in this thread have been deleted, and this post has been edited to reflect those deletions.)
In tournament directing, as in life, many questions do not have a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. When that happens, relying on rote memorization may not be sufficient, and the way to reach a reasonable answer is to know how to apply the logic behind the rules to the specific situation.
One of my very young students came home with homework from her school’s chess club
coach–memorize 4 variations of the Max Lange attack, some of them 20+ moves deep.
I told her and her parents to forget about it, and to concentrate on basic tactics, piece
development, and playing with general priorities. it is hard to imagine that this kid would
ever see a game when more than a few of these moves are actually played out, at least
in their novice and intermediate period.
I do commend the school coach’s efforts, however, just think the efforts are a little misplaced.
This is the last tournament I did that was similar in form to that. http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?201209292282 It was New Hampshire against Maine and, due at least in part to a scheduling conflict, not very competitive. I attempted to have it rated as a swiss, but it failed validation and was required to be rated as a match.
Your situation is, of course, a little different as you have two different players on board 10. Still, I would think that you could get the office to waive the 400 point rule and have it rated as a match.
As I understand it, the match rules are in place to keep people from manipulating ratings and pairings. If you organize a tournament and only two people show up, or show up in a section which has happened to me, that shouldn’t count as a match because the players didn’t arrange it.
Well, yes, the accuracy of the rating system depends a lot on the diversity of the opponent pool. A match is taking the “small pool effect” to its logical limit.
I happened to read the thread last night, and saw the message this is in response to, before it was deleted. It would probably be good to have some kind of indication there was a deleted post, otherwise people might think you were the one being rude.
Note that just because the validation module (now or at some time in the past) allows an event to be rated without being coded as a match, or requires an event to be coded as a match, that doesn’t mean that the validation module is always 100% right.
Programs, like written rules, can’t anticipate every possible situation, the best they can do is try to minimize the false positives and the false negatives. And the TD still remains responsible for running events that comply with USCF rules, the validation module is an aide, not the Supreme Court.
I have had some discussions with Mark Glickman about whether we need to start looking for closed pools or players with many games against one or two opponents, but the problem, while interesting, is difficult to handle both mathematically and procedurally.
Scott thinks it’s a swiss and relyea thinks it’s a match. Can we get clarification as to who is correct here?
I wonder if this is one of the situations where even though the validation flagged it as a match, you could contact the office and explain why it shouldn’t be coded as a match. I have seen several instances where the validation flagged a section as a match and the TD simply allowed it to be rated as a match instead of correctly contacting the office to explain why it shouldn’t be coded as a match.
Can you tell us so we can learn? Most of us don’t have Elo’s book.
The philosophy of the USCF ratings system has been discussed many times, both on the Forums and elsewhere, and it isn’t that hard to figure out even without a degree in mathematics. I think I’ll wait a while longer to see if people can work the answer out among themselves.
I agree, but that doesn’t answer my question. I’ve submitted team matches like that too, that passed validation around that time, and maybe up to 2012, but that doesn’t make them not matches.
:mrgreen: