I was wondering what some of your opinions were about the following situation.
A TD did not use the latest supplement to find out a players rating in a USCF rated tournament. Instead I suppose relying on the players word. The player reports to the TD a lower rating than his actual rating on the last supplement. That player goes on to win a class prize and collect the prize.
Later the player who rightfully should have won the prize in that section realizes the “winners” rating on the MSA is some 200 points higher on the supplement than the section he was placed in.
Eventhough the prize has already been paid in error, does the rightful winner have any recourse with the TD in collecting his prize fund??
Morally, yes. The TD screwed up, and he should pay out the prize and eat the loss. (I know of several tournaments where this has happened.) Legally … well, you’d have to ask a lawyer.
Heck, that can open up an even bigger can of worms. You talk about the player that “should have won”. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that it was a 5 round event, the winner with the bad rating had 5 points, the guy who claims he should have won had 4.5, and there are 2 guys with 4.0 who lost in the 4th and 5th round to the 5 point ‘winner’. If you start going back and paying out to the guy who claims that he had the highest score in the section, what do you do to the people who say that they could have won if they hadn’t played someone who should not have been in the section in the first place?
The TD should take the loss and pay out the prize fund. It’s not the player’s responsibility to provide an accurate rating, the TD is responsible for all valid data and distribution of prize funds accordingly.
Aren’t TDs supposed to read the rulebook to at least be a club TD?
Yes, they are supposed to, but that doesn’t mean they have to. As I recall , the only thing you need to do is tell a TD freind that you have read the rulebook and ask them to sign off on it. Which dosn’t meen, of course, that you actually did, just that you managed to persuade soeone to say you did.
It may not be the player’s responsibility to provide a current rating, but a player who intentionally allows a TD to use a rating he KNOWS is inaccurate and which allows the player into a section or prize class the player knows he should not be eligible for is not following the spirit of the rules and possibly not the letter of the rules either.
Depending on the event, it may be the organizer who is on the hook, not the TD. The USCF has never adequately defined the difference between the organizer and the TD. The organizer accepts the entries, not the TD. Thus it could be argued that the organizer is the one responsible for making sure players are entered into appropriate sections or prize categories.
In many cases the organizer and the TD are effectively the same.
However, if Joe Schmoe directs an event for a major organizer and there is a problem with the prize funds, it probably isn’t Joe who is on the hook, it is the organizer. Any TD-created errors might be subtracted from the TD’s directing fee, but it is still the organizer who writes the prize checks.
With the availability of online and printed supplement information, there is seldom a good excuse for not looking up a player’s correct and current rating.
True, but that’s an internal matter for the TD and/or organizer to settle. I used “TD” as convenient shorthand for “the person or persons responsible for paying out the prize fund as guaranteed.” If this person (let us call him “X”) fails to pay out a prize to someone who is entitled to it under the tournament conditions advertised, he has not paid out the full prize fund. If he gives (an amount equal to) this prize to someone else, he has simply made a gift, and getting it back is his problem.
When was the last time the organizer gave out the prize money? When was the last time the organizer accepted a bad rating? When was the last time the organizer had to check the players rating? When was the last time any organizer did all that work just for one event? If the director accepted the bad rating, it is not the error of the organizer.
Just because in your limited experience the TD does all the work, that does not mean that it is the TD’s responsibility to pay out the prize fund.
Have I seen organizers write the prize checks? Yes. It happens at virtually all major events. The prize checks for the US Open, for example, are paid by the USCF and those checks are written and signed by the USCF staff on site, not by the TDs, who are usually not USCF employees.
The point of the problem Nolan, the director accepted a bad rating. At the US Open, who accepted the ratings of the players? Was it the organizer or the director?
Nolan, if I accepted your rating to be 945, you win the under 1000 prize. After the organizer gives you the prize money for the under 1000 win. Should the organizer give out two under 1000 prizes after the true winner looks up your rating? If you want to pass the problem to the organizer, all you are doing is making it oh so simple to have a bad director.
Nolan, you do have more expierence, if the experience is to let the directors off the hook. Than the USCF should go off and die a slow and painful death. If that is what your USCF is and acts, than there is little reason to join the federation. If Nolan your a clone of the problems and acts of the federation, than the USCF must die.
I believe that accepting registrations, including assigning players to appropriate sections and prize groups, as needed, is the organizer’s responsibility, though that task may be delegated to the TDs.
The US Open registrations taken before onsite registration opened were all processed by the USCF office. I believe we gave the TDs a file of players and their current published ratings. I was not present for onsite registration in Phoenix, so I don’t know who staffed the registration desk, it may have been a combination of TD staff and USCF staff, depending on who was available at various hours.
Under the new national events registration system, which we hope to use for most onsite registrations as well as all advance registrations, the appropriate published ratings are looked up prior to preparing the download file for the TDs to import into the pairing program.
The TD/registration staff for the National Youth Action in Atlanta a week ago did not have to look up very many ratings, just those registrations processed manually onsite, mostly after the registrations were downloaded and split up for the section TDs, which happened at about 2AM on Saturday morning.
On those occasions when the organizer and TD are not the same person, the TD is an employee of the organizer – not the USCF.
To take a concrete example, Bill Goichberg runs tournaments all over the country. Some of them he directs himself, and when he writes checks at the end, he does so in his capacity as organizer. Others, however, are directed by subordinates. If one of those subordinates paid out a prize to the wrong person, and the player who actually won the prize later complained, are you seriously suggesting that the player would have to go after the TD personally?
In any case, all this is completely irrelevant to the original question, which was whether the tournament has to make good on improperly awarded prizes. Of course it does.
And in this case, the error was brought to the attention of the long-time TD who promptly sent the correct player a check for the class prize. I am not sure how this may or may not effected the the prize fund for the other section the erroneous player should have been placed in.