We’ll make a bracket so you know exactly whom you play each round. that leads to
The tournament is really a bunch of 16 or 32 player events which we will divide out by rating. 1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, etc.
Kiss team trophies and team pairing restrictions good-bye. they just make it harder.
Top of the bracket always gets white.
Draws? There ain’t no stinking draws in our brackets - so black gets draw odds. Black, who will be the lower rated player, advances in the event of a draw.
Go!
However, losses caused by white over-pressing to avoid the draw still count full value. True, that happens in individual last round games in normal tournaments, but this is every single round. I would never play in such an event if it were ratable. Moreover, the fact that my opponent gets black and draw odds just for being one rating point lower than me is a distortion I would not be willing to accept.
I think the rules might conflict, too. If you draw a bracket, you have a top half and a bottom half. If 16 beats 1 in the first round, he takes over 1’s spot. He’s lower rated than his next opponent but in the top half of the bracket. So is he white by virtue of holding the top bracket spot or black because he is lower rated?
I believe the idea is to have the higher-rated player be White every round. This compensates to some degree for the draw-odds handicap, but for class players, unless the rating difference is >200 points, I’m not convinced it’s sufficient. However, that doesn’t change my answer to Mr. Stokes’s question.
I made no distinction on whether such a system would be preferable. I suspect Mr. Priest mentioned it as an extreme example of the dangers of oversimplification.
I doubt I would play such an event either - though, honestly, I don’t regularly play competition that is sufficiently strong to make the color difference noticeable. If anything, my results probably indicate a slightly higher score with Black over the last 10 years or so.
Again, I think “top of the bracket” = “higher seeded” in this case. If one were seriously considering putting on such an event, this point would certainly merit clarification. That said, I probably won’t lose sleep worrying over whether such events will proliferate throughout USCF.
It doesn’t solve the pairings problems, though. Sigh. Someone is going to complain of getting Black or White three times in a row! Then you have to explain the appeals process after the TD rules against them just to keep the “simple” system consistent. The TD will have to explain why he is violating a pairing rule that was instituted after a major incident. What fun everyone will have!
Technically since its draw odds, it wouldn’t be ratable either. Specifying that “draw losses” are rated as draws, I’m not sure is enough to overcome this restriction.
I don’t see a problem. They are declaring that in case of a draw Black advances. The wording may not be clean but as noted
earlier this was for illustrative purposes, not a serious proposal.
The above is false. Draw odds, in this case, simply serve as tiebreaks in the proposed elimination bracket. The game itself would be reported in TD/A with whatever result the two players produced.
In the proposed bracket tournament, it would probably be better for the players to toss for color rather than be assigned a color. Black being given draw odds is a big advantage and overturns normal expectancies of performance.
In this type of event, the TD should definitely be required to provide color information. The rule on having the same color three times in a row can be read as applying to all events, not just Swiss System tournaments. However, if announced in advance, it seems anything goes. As long as the horsies and prelates still move the same way, okay then, bring it on.
Please justify this claim with specific references to the USCF Official Rules of Chess, 6th edition. Before attempting to do so, please kindly note that the rule about having the same color three times in a row is rule 29E5f:
I note that rule 29E5f is contained within Rule 29, Swiss System Pairings, Subsequent Rounds. Given that title, I am rather at a loss to understand how this rule applies to non-Swiss system pairings. Perhaps I am showing an unfortunate lack of creativity in my reading of the rules.
I had thought there was a mention relating to tiebreaks where armageddon type games were not ratable. But, after a quick scan I could not find any mention of this type of game anywhere. Perhaps that statement is false then. I’m sure I read that somewhere, but clearly it wasn’t from the rulebook. I’ve never hosted or even played in an event that had draw or time odds games, so I have no personal basis to compare with.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say armageddon games where each player has a different time control and the player with the shorter time control wins on a draw is not ratable. But, even this is not mentioned in the rules. In any case, I’m sure the above mentioned tournament would use a normal time control, so it makes sense to me then to still be ratable as normal.
Armageddon games are time-odds games where the players bid on receiving a color. Almost universally, players in an Armageddon game file a sealed bid for reflection time during the game. The low (winning) bid gets the winning bidder their bid-upon time, the Black pieces and draw odds. The losing bidder gets the White pieces and the full amount of reflection time for the game.
Since both players don’t start with the same amount of time, those games are indeed not ratable by USCF. (For example, the Kamsky-Ramirez Armageddon game to decide the 2013 US Championship featured starting times of 45:00 to 19:45. Under which system(s) would one propose to rate such a game?)
The games in Mr. Priest’s (facetious) proposal are not Armageddon games. The higher-seeded player simply gets White, and must win the game in order to advance in the elimination bracket. The results of the bracket will show that a player with White “lost” a drawn game, but the rating report will show the draw.
Next time, I suggest less clipping and font editing, and more reading for detail, as it is brutally obvious in the follow-up posts that the facetious nature of Mr. Priest’s proposal was well known.
I know a TD that submits time odds games for rating. I would love to be able to show that TD something that explicitly states that time odds games are not ratable.
What makes you think that TD would care? I know many TDs who do things that are questionable, or even outright against the rules. They don’t seem to care, and if I’m not playing in their events, there isn’t a lot that I can do. You could always hold your nose, have a time odds game rated, and then file a complaint.
Then you have to explain the appeals process after the TD rules against them just to keep the “simple” system consistent. The TD will have to explain why he is violating a pairing rule that was instituted after a major incident. What fun everyone will have!