In a previous version of the MSA homepage, it stated that the October Rating Supplement would include tournaments which ended through July 31st, and which were received through September 3rd(?) online. However, it appears that the October Supplement actually included events through the 3rd or 4th week of August, well past the advertised cutoff date. This might cause some consternation among players who relied on the MSA notice to believe that tournaments in August would be rated for the December Rating List.
Hasn’t it always been “through August 31”?
Alex Relyea
Yes, you’re correct, it really should be August 31st. For some reason, I had thought that the cutoff was July 31st, but I had “remembered” the wrong date. Sorry for the error!
The policy regarding the cutoff date for a supplement is about to change slightly.
Beginning with that supplement, all events that have been rated as of the cutoff point for the supplement will be included, regardless of the ending date of the event.
If the production schedule for the December supplement is similar to the one used for the last two supplements, we will begin the rerate at around 11PM on Friday, Nov 4th.
That would mean that any events that ended on November 1-4 and were rated by 11PM on the 4th would be included in that supplement.
Mike, to avoid anybody getting their knickers in a twist, could you verify that you are talking about the December supplement with a cutoff date that will probably be around November 4?
There should not be a big difference going from October 31 till November 4. With a number of states, there will not be any tournaments during that time. Even if it did, the majority of the players would like the ratings to be official than unofficial.
Yeah, my bad. The December supplement, AKA the 2005 Annual List. (I corrected my earlier note.)
If recent months are any indication, there wll be somewhere between 20
and 50 events that end in November and are rated by 11PM on
the 4th.
November 1 is on a Tuesday and November 4 is on a Friday. Other than the club tournaments, there should not be any major tournaments during that time.
That depends on what you define as major, doesn’t it? Of the roughly 7000 events that will be rated this year, most are local and will involve fewer than 20 players.
But that doesn’t make them unimportant to the players in them, or possibly the parents of those players. Could some of those games affect who gets on the top 100 lists in the annual rating list? Sure could.
There will probably be at least one Grand Prix event held on those days.
I am a fan (dad) and supporter of scholastic chess and am gathering data for a study on scholastic chess development. (Primarily recreational in purpose–but may decide to do more seriously)
Is there any way to download the top 100 lists or should I just print them off?
Is there any way to get data prior to 2002?
Can I order supplements going back to the 80’s?
Can I do what Mr. Browne does with these older supplements—or does he use data not contained in the supplements?
Is there any way to learn how many current members there are in each age category?
Nolan, Your work the past couple years has been great!
Thanks
You’ll probably have to print them off, I think they’re all stored as PDF’s, but I doubt if we’ve got them from prior to 2002, because I think that’s when we started putting rating supplement information on the website.
I don’t know if the USCF has back copies of the supplements for sale (mostly due to storage limitations), but you might be able to get someone to photocopy back top 100 lists for you.
Try contacting USCF Scholastic Director Jerry Nash, he might be interested in the results of your study, too. (jnash@uschess.org)
I’m not sure what you’re referring to with regards to Mr. Browne. Do you mean USCF Ratings specialist and NTD Walter Brown Jr?
I can run member counts by age if you give me parameters, such as what age brackets you want, do you need them broken out by membership type, age as of what date, etc. e-mail me at mnolan@uschess.org
There could be a Grand Prix tournament during the middle of that week. The question was about the cut off of the rating, not what type of tournament. There could be some Category D tournaments during the middle of that week, even myself could have one. Having the window open from November 1 till November 4, would only be 1/91 of the year. Even if we use the number of 7,000 tournaments this year, would be hard press seeing 60 or 70 events within the four days.
When talking about a major tournament, it would be very uncommon to have a Category C event during the middle of the week. Now, it does give the directors’ time to send in the tournaments (online) for the tournaments during the weekend.
It is best having the tournaments being official rating than unofficial rating. Even the official rating does not have the same value as it did before, as the re-rating can change the persons rating time and time again. True, the importance of the rating is different for each and every player. Myself would find it important to be official if it would be an established rating than a provisional rating, or be on some top one-hundred list. Other than that, the rating is going to change and change again. In time the 2005 Annual Rating list will become old data, who wants to live in the past.