What was the May Suppliment Cutoff? Was the National K-9 Championships (rated 04-06) after that cutoff?
I was sure there was a schedule of when suppliments were “cutoff” but I couldn’t find it. 
Is there a rule of thumb or schedule for each suppliment and which tournaments submitted by certain dates make the cut?
Thanks in advance.
I’m sure I’ve posted it here several times, but the cutoff for a rating supplement is the first Friday of the month before that supplement takes effect. (Out of curiosity, where would people expect to find information like that posted? One challenge in website design is not only to put things where people can find them but also where they would EXPECT to find them.)
All tournaments that have been rated at the time the supplement is created are included in the supplement.
The job to create the May supplement was started at about 11:55 PM on Friday, April 4th, and finished about 2 hours later.
The National K-9 Championships (AKA the JHS) didn’t end until Sunday, the 6th. (It was rated and posted on MSA before 8PM central time that same day.)
I have the following link bookmarked for when I want to do MSA lookups:
uschess.org/msa/
There is a couple of “boxes” below that have information about when the database has been updated. For me personally, that would be a convenient location for a line below the Rating Suppliment entry that said “All tournaments rated by 11:55 PM on Friday, April 4th.” A description of the suppliment cutoff could also be added to the box below that one. I don’t know if that page is maintained or a throwback to the old website. There may be a better location.
I take it the early cutoff is because of the need to get a file to the printers for the hardcopy?
Mike, I haven’t kept track, but it seems like it’s usually at least a couple weeks after the cutoff before the supplement is available for download. Is there a standard release date?
Grant Neilley
There hasn’t been a standard release date for the ratings supplement files, usually we wait about a week just in case some problems crop up with the supplement files. (We haven’t had any problems with them for well over a year at this point, though.)
Someone at the office is supposed to generate and post those files, sometimes a reminder is needed.
The reason for the early cutoff is mostly because we need to get the label file to the printers before the 10th of the month, and we also need the count fairly early in the month so that Daniel can finalize the print run size for that issue. BTW, the print date for Chess Life has been advanced twice in the past several years, so that we can get the
magazines in the mail earlier. I actually got my May issue before May 1st this year.
4-5 years ago the June ratings list would not have had any tournaments from early May in it, but that was changed several years ago because there really wasn’t any good reason not to include ALL the tournaments we know about when we generate the latest ratings list.