As some of you may know, every year the Watauga (TX) Chess Club organizes a match between Oklahoma and Texas, based on whoever shows up. The MSA title for the match is the final score, in case you’re interested in looking it up. Anyhow, the structure for the match is that the teams play two G/90 games, with a lunch break in the middle. If there are more players from one side or the other, as there have been in four of the five years, then they likewise play a two game match. The main tournament isn’t coded as a match, but this year there were only two extras, one of whom (our old friend Harry Payne) was unrated. Since this section didn’t meet match rules, the TD didn’t include it in the rating report.
To get to my question, based on some of the things that have been said in the Match-Tournament thread, it sounds as though this is ratable. Should I contact the TD and see if I can get him to amend the rating report, and what would he have to do?
The reasons for the restrictions for players in matches are because otherwise matches could be (more easily) used to manipulate someone’s rating, especially for players who don’t have established ratings yet.
Otherwise, the ratings system really doesn’t care WHY two players are playing each other.
I run an occasional tournament at my club which uses “match” pairings. Player 1 plays 4 games against player 2. Player 3 vs player 4, and on to the end of the paired players. I understand the reasoning behind the true match rules where one player challenges another player. The tournament with match pairings is much less likely to be abused.
I strongly favor allowing tournaments with match pairings to be rated as regular events. These events should be defined as a tournament with the parings as mentioned and the TD, not the players does the pairings. Additionally, as this is a tournament, the number of games should not be too large. It must be run in person by a certified TD.
If there is concern about potential ratings manipulation, the restrictions I have mentioned should give a reasonable amount of confidence. If you want to see an example of my event, look at event ID 200704179231
I would suggest that such an event be turned in as a single section Swiss in which player 1 plays 4 games against player 2, player 3 plays 4 games against player 4, etc.
This should pass validation but it will generate messages about players having the same opponent more than once. (Those are cautionary notes, not errors or warnings that have to be corrected or overridden.)
Because these are not coded as matches, none of the match restrictions (50 point maximum gain/loss per event, 200 point maximum gain/loss via matches over 3 years, etc) would be applied by the ratings programming.
However, the USCF does reserve the right to treat multiple games against an opponent as a match if it appears abusive. Thus, someone who played in a number of match-tournament events and is being considered for an invitational event might come under a manual review to see if those events affected his or her rating enough to have an impact on who should qualify.
We run these types of tournaments twice a year at our club. When we a had provisional rated player in one of the matches, the TD sent a note in with the paper report. Since that one time I’ve been submitting them online and coding as matches. In the future if I have an unrated or provisional player in one of the match ups, as long as I submitted all the matches together as a swiss, this would be permissible?
My understanding of the Board’s reformulated policy regarding matches is that these events are NOT matches, because the two players didn’t choose to play each other, the TD assigned them to play each other.
However, the USCF reserves the right to treat abusive situations as matches (especially if the TD is also one of the players in these events.)
Consider a situation in which two or three players play most of their games against each other rather than participate in games involving a larger pool of players. This violates some of the assumptions inherent in the ratings system.