The USCF’s policy, as far back as I can recall, has been that if an event is longer than a month, TDs are urged to send in a partial report each month.
The ‘monthly report’ policy goes back many years and is largely advisory.
The primary advantage of splitting the event up is that it gets the earlier games rated faster.
I’ve seen an event that was one game a month for 12 months. It’s understandable that players might want to see some of those games showing on their rating sooner than a year.
The primary disadvantages are that it becomes two (or more) events rather than just one which makes seeing the record of the entire event harder, and the fact that it may affect the final ratings a bit (especially if someone’s overall performance qualifies him for a bonus but none of the split-up blocks of games do.)
Events that are longer than a month but shorter than 2 full months are the toughest ones to decide what to do.
Rerating may change the equation somewhat although the online submission process has probably affected it even more, because players are beginning to EXPECT events to be rated within days if not hours of when they end.
One suggestion, which would require considerable revisions to the tournament submission and rating processes, would be to allow ‘partial’ reports to be updated to add subsequent games. (As the system is presently designed, the only way to do it is to delete the earlier event ID and re-do it completely. With updates of the event as it progresses, one of the issues would be how to deal with the ratings fee.)
The recent change to monthly rating supplement cycles may also be a factor here. If an event is only partially complete, and is rated ahead of a cutoff, then additional rounds are added, will this confuse people who look at their results online and can’t see how their latest published rating was computed?
For instance in Peoria we have expanded our Invitational City Championship to 12 players this year. 2 round robin sections of 6 with the winner of each group playing 1 game to decide the City Championship.
I’ve dedicated 8 weeks for this event. We try to work around players schedules to make sure all the games get played. In addition the possibility exists that tiebreaker playoff games could happen.
In addition we will have a seperate Game 45 tournament running concurrently with the City Championship which could even involve City Championship players if there opponent isn’t there that night.
So as a TD or Organizer or even a player how would you handle submitting the event?
We run many weeknight events that span one-two months, and I have chosen to disregard the advisory of submitting a partial rating report. Why should the club pay extra rating fees simply because of the tournament format that suits us? Noone has ever complained about this. If we ever did a tournament with one round per month, I suspect we would submit quarterly rating reports - seems to me that would strike the right balance.
Club tournaments that run 6 or 8 weeks long are not that uncommon. Most of the Northern California weekday chess clubs run this format. None submit partial rating reports and I have never heard one of the TDs or players even discussing this issue. The Mechanics’ Institute Tuesday Night Marathon has run 8-10 consecutive weeks for over 15 years (as verified by the MSA). All games have always been rated at the end.
What is the problem here? Does the USCF office suddenly want to make TDs do more work when they’ve submitted tournaments the same way for years without incident? And certainly if bonus points come into play, then that’s yet another reason to stick to the old method.
I"m just posing a question about USCF policies that may be a bit out of date. As I noted in the lead post in this thread, the ‘monthly report’ rule is advisory, not mandatory.
BTW, here’s a table showing the number of sections held in 2006 based on the number of weeks between the start date and the end date:
I think that this entire thread is based on an “Emily Litella” moment. We’ve commonly held 6-7 week events that were sent in at the end - and I was pretty sure there was never a problem with that. We also have a 8-month league which was sent in every 4 months. When I began keeping data on a DEC-10 many years ago, I was able to switch that to a monthly rating cycle (which means that I only had to worry about keeping USCF memberships current for those who actually played each month).
So, since the ‘monthly report’ didn’t ring true, I checked the latest “Rated Chess Events” booklet which I have (2002), page 9:
“4. Partial reports should be submitted for events lasting more than 60 days (league seasons, ladder events, etc.).”
I don’t see that brochure available anywhere on-line, but there is a webpage that appears to duplicate it and the quote above: uschess.org/ratings/info/events.php
So it’s not monthly but every 60 days, which handles a vast majority of the longer events.
In a PM to Mike about a different topic I suggested that a possible feature addition to the MSA might be the ability to submit partial results to get quicker updates for players in the MSA area. Then when the tournament ended it would rerate and add in any bonus points etc.
I was thinking of it as an option. The TD or Organizer would pay an approximated rating fee on the first submission. Extra payment would be left on file for future tournaments etc.
Mike realized that the topic we were discussing was probably more appropiate for the general forum vs the PM and started the topic here.