What is the official ruling of running tournament online?
If my friends and I agree to play a tournament over ICC between us, can we rate it?
I’m not sure what special things need to be set up since it’s currently being done.
I don’t know the answer to this question, but it does bring up interesting possibilities. We were talking in another thread about doing longer time control tournaments over several weeks. If online games could be rated it would give a player who couldn’t show up on a given night the ability to arrange a time to play their opponent online. The only problem I see with this is the TD being ‘present’. If I allowed this, ( and it was legal ) I’d have to make myself available if they need me to check out something. would be hard to “stop the clock” the players would be forced to ‘moretime’ to make up for when the clock was ‘stopped’
Interesting concept though.
Stopping the clock is as simple as typing “Adjournment”. I was looking at a way that we can start a way to play on ICC, between friends, or people you know.
I think this is an inevitable future for having rated games online, and I know of a good 4-6 people who would be interested in doing this. If a game had an increment, then the need for many possibilities like, insufficient losing chances, etc would be eliminated since a delay would already be on there. I think both rated tournaments by ICC and USChess Live have this kind of delay.
They have the rated quicks on uscl every week and a uscf TD doesn’t even have to be present. I think they allow this because in the ‘quick’ the td bot pretty much can handle about anything with a few tweaks by the managers.
I can see a lot of potential problems involved if they allow regular rated tournaments into online play by anyone wanting to do so. But I’ll just see if we get any official ruling from someone at uscf.
I don’t know how what the USCF’s policy is on rating events played online but not run as a USCF-rated event by the online chess service itself (eg USCL or ICC).
In general, USCF rated events have to be submitted through a USCF affiliate and signed by a certified TD who certifies that the event conforms to USCF tournament rules.
For events not run by the chess online service, that’s difficult to do online unless there is a TD at both ends.
USCL and ICC are USCF affiliates, so they have the right to submit rated events. (I don’t know if ICC is actively running them, USCL is, though we get complaints about them not submitting their events promptly.)
Further, as I understand it their servers have some safeguards to ensure that the players are correctly identified and that there are no computers involved.
However, I think they are restricted to running only quick-rated events online unless the events (and possibly the sites where the players are at) are personally supervised and monitored by a certified TD.
For example, I think the finals of the Amateur Teams have been held online at least once under USCF regular-rated time controls and other conditions. But as I recall there was a certified TD present at each site.
I’ll kick this one up to the ED and USCF President to see if they have a more comprehensive policy.
I was actually a TD at one of the amatur events, along with an active TD on ICC.
I talked to a few people briefly about this on ICC, and I think we would only restrict it to quick events. I don’t think anyone wants to risk their standard rating online anyway. There’s a push from a lot of people to re-run quick tournaments on ICC, but this would be something for a few people, and not 112 like they used to have
Why would someone want to have an online game USCF rated if it wasn’t part of a USCF-rated event being run by the online service itself?
The only reason I can think of is to avoid paying an entry fee to the service.
I can think of several reasons
- ICC no longer runs rated tournaments, the alternative, well, it sucks.
- You have a longer time control than a 10 minute game
- You play among friends and aren’t limited to one evening
- It would be better organized, somewhat private, and a better experience
Here is Bill Goichberg’s response on the policy question:
Based on this, I would say you cannot regular-rate events you participate in on an online chess service such as ICC without specific authorization from the USCF, and you can only quick-rate them if a TD is willing to certify that they were conducted under USCF tournament rules.
Further refinement of USCF policy with regards to the rating of online play may be needed, but I did not get the impression from Bill’s response that this is likely to make the Board’s hot list of things to work on.
So from what you’re saying is that Quick rated is okay, but regular is not?
and you can only quick-rate them if a TD is willing to certify that they were conducted under USCF tournament rules.
Which this is impossible to do, even with how USCL is ran (I understand you have no control over this).
So basically, this takes us back to the original question:
If myself, and 3 other close friends who usually get together and play on a regular basis, could we rate a G/15 quad that we played on ICC? From what I’m reading, as long as I can verify that I am present during their games and handle any issues?
As I interpret Bill G’s note, I would say the answer is ‘no’, except in special situations requiring advance approval only the online service can submit games conducted on its service for USCF rating.
I know that USCL periodically held off submitting the games from some events because they had concerns that there were factors that would have made the games non-ratable, such as players using computers or other forms of assistance.
I have suggested to the chair of the Ratings Committee that they might want to get involved in this issue, though it is more of a Rules issue. (It could also raise issues for TDCC to consider because of enforcement aspects.)
Part of the reason Ratings might be concerned is ‘cherry-picking’, ie, players deciding after the fact whether or not to rate their games. That raises a lot of potential for manipulating the ratings system. (That’s why there are restrictions on match play, too.)
Maybe there should be an entirely separate USCF rating system for on-line chess, just to keep the “dirty stuff” out of OTB ratings. (And a separate system for OTB blitz, as well, but this has been discussed before.)
Bill Smythe
I’m not sure if blitz would be viable separately for the USCF (it wasn’t for Walter Browne, after all), and I’d really hate to see a blitz/quick dual rating range in addition to the quick/regular range. (The latter causes quite a few administrative headaches as it is.)
In fact, I suggested to the chair of the Ratings Committee the other day that since the majority of games rated in 2005 will be dual rated, with Game/30 being the dominant time control, perhaps it is time to scale back somewhat on what games are dual-ratable, such as lowering the upper bounds so that Game/60 is no longer dual ratable. (The RC Chair was not in favor of that suggestion.)
As to a USCF online rating system, where would those games be conducted? Would people pay 18 cents/game to have their online events rated by the USCF?
I’m told ICC doesn’t do USCF rated events these days, and USCL has always been much smaller and cannot seem to put forth the effort to get their USCF rated events submitted promptly, why would either system want to support a USCF online rating system in addition to and somewhat in competition with their own?
Further, if the USCF barely has the resources to do what it’s doing now, how can it come up with the capital and other resources to compete in the online arena? (It SHOULD have done so years ago when it had the resources, but that’s also an old story for us old fogeys to tell while sipping our Geritol.)
I think it’s an inevitable future for online chess for USCF to compete, but of course, there needs to be more thought into the process before specific rules are in place for these safeguards.
But thanks for checking into that nolan. Maybe in a couple of years.
I think the main factor into why you’d want to do this is to allow your friends who come over on a timely basis to have a rated game online, which i think can be safely done, but i guess it can’t be universally done yet.
I guess that would depend on answers to such as questions as: How many games / events per year are presently quick-rated at blitz time controls (game/9 or faster)? And what percentage of total quick-rated games / events does this represent? (I don’t know how easy it would be to dig up such information.)
What sort of headaches, for example?
The same places they are now, presumably. Somebody in this thread noticed that some on-line games were somehow being quick-rated.
I don’t think USCF ever should have become involved in online chess to this extent in the first place.
My ideal would be for USCF to be a rules overseer and ratings manager for online chess, just as it has been for decades for OTB. Individual online providers (including ICC and USCL) could affiliate with USCF and submit their events for rating, just as individual OTB organizers do now.
If these affiliates want to establish their own rating systems as well, that’s fine too. It’s already being done OTB in the scholastic arena in some areas.
If online affiliates don’t want to submit their events for USCF rating, well, then we don’t need a USCF online rating system at all. My point was to stop “dirtying up” OTB quick ratings by mixing them with online ratings. This can be done in either of two ways: (1) have a separate online rating system, or (2) refuse to rate online events at all (leave that up to ICC, USCL, et al). Whether (1) or (2) is better could depend on the demand.
Bill Smythe
We have about a year’s worth of data from the new ratings programming, so this isn’t a bad time to do this analysis.
Here’s the breakdown for events rated under the new programming, which tracks dual-rated events properly so that they aren’t double-counted like they were under the old programming:
rsys | count | players | games
-----+-------+---------+--------
D | 7715 | 123644 | 256659
Q | 1602 | 16115 | 36792
R | 4840 | 93048 | 203774
Because all quick/dual rated events have to have a time control field that is consistent with quick/dual rating, I can give a breakdown by time control for quick rated only. (This won’t quite match the above because of some events where changes have been made.)
timectl | count | players | games
--------+-------+---------+-------
5 | 254 | 2834 | 9153
7 | 13 | 41 | 32
10 | 506 | 5378 | 11255
12 | 12 | 125 | 311
13 | 2 | 13 | 30
15 | 282 | 2480 | 5632
18 | 9 | 255 | 700
20 | 205 | 1664 | 2969
22 | 4 | 95 | 247
25 | 110 | 1002 | 2035
29 | 197 | 2111 | 4089
Only around 260 events, totalling less than 10,000 games, were held at blitz time controls, representing about 1/6 of the quick-only events.
Here’s a table showing the time control for all the dual-rated events:
timectl | count | players | games
--------+-------+---------+--------
30 | 4475 | 69148 | 141139
35 | 52 | 612 | 1141
40 | 457 | 8593 | 18764
45 | 1170 | 19575 | 40696
50 | 46 | 698 | 1298
55 | 29 | 340 | 642
60 | 1476 | 24537 | 52698
Combined with earlier data, this shows that nearly 30% of the games rated in the last year have been at Game/30.
If fully 1/6 of quick-only events (and almost 1/3 of quick-only games) were actually blitz games, then that’s a PLENTY good argument in favor of having a separate blitz rating system, if you ask me.
I’m not saying that it belongs anywhere on pages 1-3 of your 4-page to-do list, though. 
Bill Smythe
With under 10,000 games and only around 1364 unique USCF ID’s in roughly a year’s worth of data, I don’t know that there are enough blitz events and players for this to be viable as a standalone rating system.
We would, in effect, be back where we were with the quick system before dual rating was introduced to push up those numbers.
228 of those players came from just two events, the blitz events at the National Youth Action and the K-12 Championships.
As to my to-do list, that’s not my call. If the Board or Delegates authorize a separate blitz system, it will not only go on the list it will probably do so at a relatively high priority.
I would guess that 80%+ of those G/30 are scholastic.
Pretty close.
Here’s a table showing the number of games played by adults and scholastic/youth members by rating system (regular/quick/dual), with G/30 and G/5 broken out separately as well:
type | IDs | games | reg | dual | g30 | quick | blitz
------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------
Adult | 14614 | 157528 | 98236 | 38262 | 18492 | 21029 | 4266
Schol | 41472 | 324687 | 100572 | 209088 | 117495 | 15027 | 4435
Other | 3001 | 17662 | 6387 | 10267 | 5782 | 1008 | 469
(Others are primarily family memberships and non-members, both of which are a mixture of adults and kids.)
It is worth noting that games played by scholastic and youth players, which make up 2/3 of the games being rated, are not necessarily all in scholastic EVENTS.
The adult blitz games were played by about 620 members, which I think is further evidence that there are insufficient blitz players to support a separate rating system.