Hi,
I am having our State High School and Junior High School team tournaments on 3/29. I have been asked by 2 teams to not place their players in board order in order to drop down a player who, in the team’s opinion, has an inflated provisional rating. USCF rules make no mention of provisional ratings although they do allow for the estimation of unrated player’s strength. I do know the parties involved and there is no doubt in my mind that are not trying to gain an unfair advantage.
What has been your experience with this topic? Should I allow the team captians to change the board orders for provisional ratings?
A provisional published rating is still a published rating under USCF rules.
Team-on-team events present additional challenges to TDs.
Put yourself in the shoes of the coach of another team. Now suppose your team is matched against another team where you see a player on board 3 with a published rating that would suggest he should be on board 1. Does that appear to be fair to you and to your team, or should your team also be allowed to order players in some order other than their published ratings?
Hi Mike,
I completely understand your point. I originally was going allow the team captains to reorder their provisional players, have changed my mind after asking other Senior TD’s in the state. I just wanted to hear if other TD’s had different experiences.
No. Published provisional ratings are “ratings” - they are not an estimate of an unrated player’s strength.
You are allowed to assign ratings for pairing and prize purposes (and team placement) as your estimated rating is not LOWER than the player’s published rating.
Provisional ratings are a delicately balanced compromise. Fiddling with that compromise on an ad hoc basis is not recommended.
Now…the “clever” way to approach this would be for the coach to (credibly…ah, there’s the rub) convince you that the OTHER players on his team were underrated, and for him to ask you to move them UP (instead of moving the one player down). This would be technically legal - but I don’t recommend it.
In my experience with team events, most teams have some sort of ratings anomaly that affects team order - but only a few coaches are pushy enough to insist on the TD violating the rules to accommodate their problem. If you really want to get involved with all of this, advertise in advance that teams can play in any order they want to - and watch the coaches go crazy trying to figure out the optimum way to juggle their lineups to gain maximum advantage. Otherwise, Just Say No - insist that the teams be in strict ratings order.
Mike, Ken, & Tim,
Thanks for your input. It has helped me finalize my decision. Iowa is a small state and when you know the coaches are just looking out for a provisional player who had a lucky result, it is easy to want to go along. That is why I am grateful for your advice ( and that of Mark Capron & Roger Gotschall , 2 or Iowa’s Senior TD’s).
A long time ago (probably 1987!) I ran a team insanity tournament, a 10-round, G/30 tournament starting Saturday night and finishing Sunday afternoon. Teams consisted of four players, but the team captain would submit his board order in secret to the TD on an index card, and he couldn't change it (until the next round). It's all one big hazy fog to me now, but I recall that it was kind of fun watching the teams try to outsmart each other.
In Kentucky our scholastic team championship is 4 board. We use the official rating for the month of the tournament - generally in February. As long as there is a published rating - provisional or not -that is what we use. Unrated players -whether they have 0 ganes or some but fewer than required even for the provisional rating - can be placed in any order the coach wants. Games posted to the USCF after the rating cut off do not count - they are not yet part of the official rating. Our rules in detail are on the Ky Chess Association web site in the “blue book”
unrated players are unrated - they are not LOW rated.
The TD has the responsibility of assigning ratings to unrateds for pairing/team placement purposes. He can use any source of information available to him - including testimonials from the team’s coach. In all cases, he should assign ratings that he thinks are accurate (or, as accurate as he can make them).
Note that the TD can assign ratings for prize/placement purposes to RATED players, too. Here, the constraint is that the assigned rating cannot be LOWER than the player’s published USCF rating.
In most “adult” events, it is appropriate to put the unrateds at the bottom (i.e., assign them a rating LOWER than any rated player in the event.
In an “open” event with many low rated players, it might be more appropriate to put the unrateds (as a group - with no other information) at roughly 1100. It would be appropriate to consider age, and put unrated adults at 1100 but unrated school-age players at (say) 0500. Note that 0500 might very well NOT be lower than some published ratings.
In a “scholastic” event, it is appropriate to put all unrateds at 0400 - again, it might be useful to use age to tweak this somewhat.
It all depends on the type of event, and the kind of information the TD has at his disposal.
No we do not. Players are in rating order. Coaches can then choose the order for unrated players after all the rated players are in order. For example - 4 player team with 1000, 800, UNR-1 and UNR-2. The board order will be 1=1000, 2=800 and then the coach can place UNR-1 or UNR-2 on board 3.
For purposes of computing a team rating the unrated players are assigned a rating 50 points below the lowest rated player, but not less than 100. The team rating is the average.
If all 4 players are unrated, which occasionally happens in our K-3 section, then the team rating is set at 500 and the coach can put them in any order.
Once the coach puts the unrated player on a board though they have to stay on that board - so in the 1st example UNR-1 can either be board 3 or 4 but cannot switch between rounds. Or in the 2nd example of 4 unrated players whatever order the coach starts with stays for the whole event.
In our HS team championship, ratings are only one qualifier used since the vast majority of IL HS events are not USCF rated. There is also a “local” rating system, but both are used only as guides. We also consider the board order used by teams throughout their season. (Teams have been forfeited and removed from the tournament for violating this. A couple of years ago a prominent Chicago team was removed from the event because their 13th board for the year was playing board 1 in the tournament.)
A few years ago I had a team (our teams are 8 boards) where my first 4 players were 2000+,2000+, 1900+, 1900+, and during the season gave all of them a shot at playing first board. This led to a discussion about the fact that in many sports there are players of interchangeable ability but who may present a better matchup against given opponents stylistically - so the question has been posed as to whether players within X points (probably 100) can be swapped for each round in our 7 round state championship. This increases the role of coach during an event, and given that other sports allow it there is a lot of sympathy for this argument in IL. The concern over allowing it is more along the line of practical enforcement, calculation of board prizes, etc.
IL also uses weighted scoring to discourage stacking (although it theoretically doesn’t remove the motivation.) Boards are scored at 12 pts for board 1, 11 for board 2, etc. down to 5 for board 8. Total score in a match is 68 pts. Yes, that means 3 wins on the top 3 boards and any draw wins a match.
Most of our HS events in Kentucky ARE USCF rated. Plus our state championship is an invitational where one receives an invitation by playing in a regional qualifying tournament which is USCF rated. We used to allow coaches to switch players who were within 50 rating points but changed it a few years ago. We do not have enough players to do move than 4 boards. And we do not weight boards as that devalues the lower boards and with jsut 4 why would you anyway. I understgand why you do with 8 boards. Of course we also do not have high schools that are anywhere close to as large as you have in Illinois.