Here is the routine (short version, condensed details):
Send your complaint to USCF with all available evidence (they don’t do detective work or investigations–they just are not equipped to do that). Include a refundable $25 good faith fee (returned if the complaint is deemed non-trivial).
The party you complain about gets a copy (usually via certified mail) of what you filed and gets 30 days to reply.
Both the complaint and reply are sent to the proper committee(s) where it gets evaluated and acted on (each committee can take a different amount of time).
All parties are notified by the USCF regarding the disposition of the complaint.
This process may take some time.
It is to the complaining parties benefit to submit complete evidence that would stand up in a court of law.
IMHO: This case might best be taken care by the office administratively; i.e., the TD/affiliate might not be able to hand in any tournament report without the office first reviewing it. The office can also place restrictions on affiliates regarding what kinds of events that they can run or submit for a rating; i.e., perhaps no events will be accepted from this affiliate if the TD is also a player in those tournaments. These are only suggestions and my opinion and not legal advise of any kind.
I can agree with the basic concept of what you post, but there is a problem with not making things public on this forum.
This forum is for USCF members only, therefore only members can read this directly.
The facts on the MSA are there and certainly can be explained if explanations for them exist.
One or two have stated this fellow refuses to play anyone that is higher rated. This is significant.
If this fellow wants to refute the statements on this USCF member forum, he certainly can.
Making this information public to members certainly makes it so this type of unscrupulous behavior will be at least discouraged by those in communication with this TD or anyone they know coming in contact with him.
When Sam Sloan brought up the Robert Tanner problem a number of years ago, the evidence of the MSA and the facts brought out on this forum made it so the problem was indeed identified and verified. Tanner resigned many things.
It is unfortunate that he is allowed to come back as a major TD with his suspension time not fulfilled. You see many of us do not forget these things even though some hope such disparities of ethics and justice in our USCF are left to exist.
Thank you Tim. I stand corrected on that point. I also say that is a good and just thing.
But, I was one of those that called it to attention on this forum. A number of people said we were being too picky or something. I guess we did see a win on that.
By the fact that some of us here had to call it to the USCF attention does show that many want the unethical to exist, or phrased another way the ethical and just to allow in fallow.
That’s not true. Mr. Berry decided to make his initial post in the “tournaments” forum, rather than the “USCF Issues” forum. This is readable by anyone.
On another note, who exactly has standing to file an ethics complaint?
IMHO: This case might best be taken care by the office administratively; i.e., the TD/affiliate might not be able to hand in any tournament report without the office first reviewing it. The office can also place restrictions on affiliates regarding what kinds of events that they can run or submit for a rating; i.e., perhaps no events will be accepted from this affiliate if the TD is also a player in those tournaments. These are only suggestions and my opinion and not legal advise of any kind.
How does one take care of something like this “administratively”? Who handles something like this? Any suggestions?
The ED has the authority to change someone’s rating, establish a floor or ceiling, etc. It is used sparingly. In practice, this usually means staff makes a recommendation to the ED.
The problem with an ‘administrative action’ is this: What are the criteria for which situations get acted upon and which do not, what defines which actions are taken, what safeguards are there against capricious or overly severe action, etc.
I suspect it would be possible to find dozens of ‘interesting’ situations in MSA. Which of them may have completely legitimate explanations?
I disagree. If you picked a RANDOM player 500 points lower rated than me, I’d probably get something less than .95 of the points. However, if I were allowed to pick a player that’s really, legitimately 500 points lower in strength than I am (and not some underrated, rapidly improving player), I think I’d win every single point.
But the REAL point is that you need strong PROOF get him convicted of ethics violations and I don’t think you have it. Just presenting the known facts (playing a closed group of much weaker players and nobody else) should be enough for an administrative action. After all, don’t we have a precedent for limiting such ratings growth (though at a higher level with a better known master being the recipient of the ratings points)?
I’ve heard the Jude Acers story from several sources, with key parts of it differing. Moreover, we don’t have detailed tournament records from 35-40 years back to confirm it.
Suppose, however, some 2350 player moves to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where, as noted in another thread, the highest rated active player is around 1850. Or suppose an Expert is in prison where the other players are no better than C strength.
What’s fair to such a player? A single loss could undo many weeks of events resulting in one or two point gains.
An approach I’ve thought about more than once (though not for this specific situation) would be to maintain something like a 50 game moving average using the old provisional rating formula. That average for a strong player playing against much weaker players would be pretty much capped at 400 points above the AVERAGE rating of his opponents.
I’m not sure how to meld that information into the ratings system, though.
It does seem remarkable to be able to play, on more than several occasions, that many regular rated and quick rated games in one day. This is truly an ingenious method by a person who was a B player in 2009 to become a master in 2010. And by playing not a single player over 2000, and many not over 1600. Pretty much throws all of the arguments about the purity and integrity of the rating system under the bus. Have any of the other players in these events been contacted or have stories to tell? If this TD has carried out a nefarious plan to artificially inflate his own rating, then it looks like he will take at least one other TD down with him. This is a matter for the office to observe and the ethics committee to deal with.
An interesting question would be why is he doing this? Does he think he can “earn” the master rating and then use that fact to make money? He will be sorely disappointed. Or maybe not. I do know of one player who has not played in a complete tournament in twenty years. He plays one or two 1000 - 1100 players per year to keep his name on the rating list; he gains a couple of points each year. This helps him to make money teaching chess. While other older players have declined in that time, he has gained 50+ points, a “medical miracle,” to quote one ironic friend. If he can keep it going for another 5 or 10 years, he will be a 2400+ player.
“… was not a violation of USCF tournament rules” — seems in contradiction to the next statement — “You could file an Ethics Complaint”.
Sound like the person is exploiting a loophole: so close the loophole with a new rule.
Thus it seems off-target to say — “I don’t believe the Rules Committee is the appropriate place for a complaint”.
(A nonEthics complaint about a rule loophole should go to the Rule Committee, is seems to me.)
Probably the ELO rating system implicitly assumes a balanced distribution of opponents by their ELO strengths.
A new rule could forbid any pattern that grossly violates this assumption.
. .
This case very much reminds me of a case in the mid 90s in Las Vegas in which a TD/organizer hand picked opponents for himself and also his students. They all seemed to get inflated ratings. Provisional players would have a single game per tournament rated against a much higher rating opponent, and both ratings would go up. Some of the children even qualified to represent the US in world junior categories and performed well below what their ratings would have suggested.
I reviewed several of the MO cross tables and would not be surprised to see that the TD in question is brought up on ethics charges for data manipulation.
I also found it interesting that someone could play 10 dual rated games in one day unless they were unemployed or on vacation.
Just a couple of thoughts I had about closing this loophole.
Would it be possible to set up the ratings to automatically re-rate all of a player’s games after he/she play his/her 25th game and establish his/her rating? The adjusted ratings would be based on the established rating. In this case, instead of showing wins against a 2000-2200, all of those first seven games would be results against a 1600.
There would be minimal effect on the ratings if you only play someone once or twice while he/she is provisional (as established USCF ratings tend to correct small anomalies), but in this case would have a significant effect in slowing down the rating gains in a situation where someone loses the first game, cedes a couple of draws/losses to get an inflated rating going, and cashes in by going on a winning streak against this overrated “rival.”
Another thought is to have an automatic flag and review for frequent games against the same competition. Say if more than 20% of a player’s games are against the same player over let’s say a 40 game period, then the ratings should be flagged for review. I was joking with a fellow club member here in Raleigh about the bonus points, and how they could be used to inflate ratings. The joke was that the easiest way to make expert would be for he and I (both mid 1800s) find three of four other 1850ish players, and then just play a weekly double round robin game/30s. Over time we’d pick up bonus points here and there, and it wouldn’t take particularly long before all of us would be over 2000, even with equal overall results. (Of course with each of us grabbing our fair shares of +1, +2, +3, etc. results.)
I don’t think that there would be many cases of players playing that many games against the same opponent, but those who do should certainly come over some scrutiny.
Perhaps more than you think. There are around 200 instances of players who had 25 or more regular rated games against each other in calendar 2009. Richard Cowen of AZ had 162 games against Kevin Musil.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean here. It sounds like it has the potential for creating an oscillating loop.
In any event, I would recommend you make your suggestions to the Ratings Committee.
So, it could be reported as an Ethics violation, a ratings violation or a rules violation…nevertheless, it appears to be some type of violation…just a violation of something not in writing…hmmm.
If one carefully looks at this history, there have been unrated players that attained a rating over 2000 by losing to this TD and beating other provisional rated players at 1400-1600. Then points are accumulated by beating this same individual in a later game.
Also, the games are sent in for rating individually instead of all at once in many of these “tournaments”, which allows for more points to be awarded than if they had been rated together. Each tournament, in many cases is but a single game. However, there are multiple games played on any given day. If you take the results and apply them together instead of alone, less rating points are gained. Why not submit all of the games at once? Because it obvioulsy makes the process that much quicker to submit them individually.
I was present at a Louisiana Chess Assn. meeting which barred him from playing in (at least) the Louisiana Championship around 1968. Some things presented I had already heard about, others were new to me, I don’t remember the specifics. Acers was not present and, IIRC, he had left the state for the west coast after the spring semester at LSU that year.
He told me about playing a lot of rated matches though. My only first hand account was that I had run an unrated round robin with 10 players to select a team for the ACU-I tournament the next spring. He submitted a rating report of that event with 4 players (USCF members) w/o my approval or permission. I doubt he would have done that if he had been upset by a rated player though.
Which probably makes publicizing the situation to be the best course of action.
Meanwhile, it appears that some tweaking with the event rating system is in order.