I am considering submitting the following Advance Delegate Motion for the 2011 Annual Delegates Meeting. Comments are welcome.
Bob Messenger
Massachusetts Delegate
In Chapter 7, replace Rule 14 with the following:
14. Category I. A tournament held in the United States that will be submitted to both FIDE and USCF for rating. Such tournaments should be directed by a TD certified at the Senior level or higher whose level is appropriate for the expected size of the event. FIDE may also impose requirements specifying what level of certification or supervision, if any, is necessary for a TD to direct such events.
This ADM comes from a discussion in the topic “FIDE rated but uses USCF rules” in this forum. The existing rule reads as follows:
The existing rule makes a distinction between title and non-title events and specifies the level of certification (IA or FA) or supervision (“supervised by an IA”) required by FIDE at the time the rule was adopted. However, these requirements are imposed by FIDE, not by the USCF, and are subject to change. The qualifier “has the FIDE endorsement” is ambiguous and could be taken to mean that the USCF requires the TD of a tournament submitted for FIDE rating to be an IA for FA even if FIDE doesn’t require this. I think it would be better for the USCF rule simply to require that the TD be USCF-certified at the Senior level or higher and say that FIDE may impose additional requirements. That way the USCF rule doesn’t need to be changed every time the FIDE rule changes.
Thanks, Sevan. It does look like my proposed ADM is redundant since the EB will be submitting an ADM on the same subject. The only quibble I have with the EB’s ADM is that I don’t think the USCF rules should quote the FIDE rules directly, since the FIDE rules might change, but should refer to the FIDE rules by reference as I did in my proposal. But that’s only a minor difference, so I’ll support the EB’s ADM.
Bob - You make a good point about changes in FIDE rules - that was one of the reasons why our rule needs revising as FIDE changes made it incorrect and obsolete. However, in the wording that I used, I don’t see the problem:
This seems to reference FIDE rules without specifically naming those rules and this case, needs to reference the rule about no longer allowing off-site supervision by an IA for a norm event.
In my version I simply say that FIDE may impose additional requirements, without saying what those requirements are. That way if FIDE changes its requirements again we won’t have to change the USCF rule. Your way does have the advantage of making it easier for TDs with access to the USCF rules but without immediate access to the FIDE rules to know what the requirements are.
But we would have to make changes in the USCF rules if the FIDE changes are, like they were last summer, so different than our rules that it makes our rule simply wrong. Lets say a future rule requires an Arbiter at every board in a norm event, that would need to change in our rules as well.
As an FYI update to this ADM/thread. The Board withdrew the motion creating the ADM. The TDCC voted 15-1 to accept the wording of the original ADM, replacing the language in the current TD certification for International Tournaments, and referred it back to the EB for implementation. This was approved 7-0 using DACI-47
47. TDCC Changes. Changes in the Tournament Director certification program proposed by the TDC Committee may be approved by the Executive Board without approval of the delegates. (2006).