The recent policy has been to run the supplement starting shortly after 11PM on the 1st Friday of a month. However, the August and October supplements were run a week later than that in order to include the World Open and the Labor Day weekend events in those supplements.
No decision has been made on when we will cut off the ratings lists on an ongoing basis in 2007. I’m open to suggestions.
Doing the cutoff on a Friday helps to minimize the impact of a supplement cutoff on the office staff, since the supplement process is a considerable drain on processor time. Also, Saturday (ahead of around 6PM) is one of the slowest times for TD submitting events online.
It would be possible to do an official rating cutoff EVERY Friday, though that might be confusing to players and TDs.
Hi Mike:
It is my understanding that the current limiting factor for the supplement cuttoff is the requriement to have the official ratings on CL lables and the time needed to get the lables to the printer. Is this correct? If this is correct, any attempt to move the cuttoff to significantly later in the month would involve either a change to the lable policy or geting a mailer who can process the lable file later in the month, true?
I’d have to check with Daniel to see when Quebecor needs the label file, and I understand he’s trying to get an earlier press date scheduled for future issues so that copies get delivered a few days earlier.
That probably argues in favor of keeping the ‘1st Friday’ schedule, and may even argue against letting that slip for the World Open and the Labor Day events in 2007.
The worst case scenario might be 2009, when Labor Day is on the 7th of September. Waiting until the 11th to cut off for the October ratings list might not be possible, because that would mean running the labels on the 14th (assuming nothing goes wrong with the rating cutoff.)
Is this going to start with the January 2007 Rating Supplement (presumably including all tournaments rated by December 1st)?
Is this going to be announced [b]IN ADVANCE, [/b]in Chess Life (i.e., the [i]December [/i]issue), as opposed to "By The Way...?" Or will it be left for everyone to discover this on their own, when they enter a tournament in Janaury and are told by the TD (assuming the TD knows about this) that they will have to use the rating on their January Chess Life mailing label, which, unlike all the previous months, is now suddenly "official" (and which includes tournaments in November, which everyone had assumed would be rated on the February 2007 Rating List, as in previous years)??
I know it’s mentioned in the Executive News Quarterly, which will be in the mail shortly and goes to all affiliates and Delegates, I do not know if it will be mentioned in the December Chess Life.
I would assume there will be something about this in the Annual Rating List when it goes to press later this month.
It is also mentioned on MSA and in the news section of the TD/Affiliate Support Area.
It would certainly be [i]typical[/i] of the USCF not to think that it's necessary to announce a major policy change like this in advance. It's nice that somebody decided to alert the Delegates and Affiliates (and in such a high-visibility vehicle as the "Executive News Bulletin" no less)-- [i]BUT WHY DIDN'T ANYONE THINK IT WOULD BE IMPORTANT TO TELL THE [b]PLAYERS[/b] ABOUT THIS, TOO??? [/i] This really should have been in the November and December issues of Chess Life.
Won’t the players all be surprised come January? Won’t the TDs be a little upset to find out that they’ve paid out the Under 1400 prize to a player with a new January 2007 rating of 1402?!
I think that there is potentially a large amount of [b]unnecessary [/b]ill will which is likely to be caused by players who show up at tournaments and are surprised to learn that:
1. No one had told them the rating they expected to use when they entered in advance is not the one they will be using;
2. The rating they expected to use when they showed up to enter a tournament on site is suddenly not the rating they will be using.
I believe it’s worth considering making this policy change effective with the March 2007 Rating Supplement, and then using the extra two months to publicize [i]in Chess Life /i the newly revised policy that your rating on your mailing label will be used for all tournaments beginning that month.
Will the format of the mailing label itself also be revised appropriately, so that no +/- is shown every other month from now on?
You may find this difficult to believe, Steve, but MOST of the people I have mentioned this to have responded with “IT’S ABOUT TIME!!”
I suspect that most TDs would feel free to continue to use the December annual for events in January, as a reasonable interpretation of the rules during the transition.
I agree with Steve. It’s a bad idea, poorly implemented. I could easily write a fairly long list of the problems this will create, but since it apparently has already been decided without public notice or opportunity for comment, there seems little point.
I also think this policy change needs to be publicized big time in Chess Life. Hopefully it’s not too late to get this into the December issue.
The problem with the assumption that TD will use the Decemeber annual for Jaunuary events is that not all will do this. It could be a crapshoot in terms of what January event a player is entering, and whether the organizer will use December or January ratings. I don’t know how many large class prize tournaments there are in Jaunuary that would be inpacted by this change. The Liberty Bell Open is one that does come to mind.
I would assume that the US Amateur Team will stick with the Annual List since it’s generally in December that players start finalizing their team rosters based on December ratings.
An easy way to deal with this is to just not issue the first MONTHLY rating list until February. (As I recall, the notice said that we would change to monthly lists ‘starting in January 2007’, so that’s possibly more consistent with the notice anyway, since a January list would have to be created and issued in December.)
Everyone is expecting the December Annual List to be used in events in December and January, and if they’re planning on using that list for events in February they need to announce that exception anyway.
I’d be curious to know what percentage of the players for whom a difference in their December 2006 rating and their January 2007 rating (if one is issued) would affect which section Bill would permit them to play in anyway?
What percentage of the players in that event will have to play up because of CCA minimums?
It’s probably more significant for events that have teams. For example we have our state scholastics on the March 2-4 weekend with advance entries due Feb 12. How will teams be able to plan? We’ve already sent in all the tlas so we probably can’t add “Using the Feb 2007 supplement” to the tlas, but we can add that to our on-line tla, on the tournament website, and on our flyers.
I do wish that the USCF would start announcing things well ahead of making changes, I’ve already had to change bunches of flyers this fall when the USCF membership types and rates kept changing (without much advance notice). It seems better to me that the old approach of announcing things in August to start in January was much better. This didn’t make the October supplement or October CL (and there’s a mistake there saying that the December supplement will be used in December and November!) and if only announced in December really shouldn’t apply until May.
I don’t think that will be a problem for you since under the old system there would have been in a February supplement anyway. I suspect that coaches would have been planning to send in their entries once the February ratings were posted on the MSA. (Supplement ratings appear on the MSA before the supplement is issued.)
Players in tournaments that are held early in a supplement month always are faced with the possibility that their rating may change enough to change their eligibility for a particular section. However with the MSA data they can pretty much determine which section to enter. Directors who do their data entry ahead of the supplement release will have to double check section eligibility.
I think delaying the monthly supplements until February or March will give the USCF enough time to get the information into Chess Life, and Chess for Kids.
That is what happened in the past and that was why we never previously needed to make any special rules. But now there will be a new March 2007 supplement (which had never previously been official) which would be the default official ratings for our tournament.
That is true and for my team tournament on Feb 3rd I knew to include “December 2006 Ratings Used” in my tla and flyer. However that wasn’t previously the case for a tournament at the beginning of the odd month, so I had no way of knowing that it would be necessary to do that for a March 2-4 tournament.
The problem isn’t having to recheck our data entry when the new supplement appears, it’s preparing tlas, creating a website, printing flyers, etc. and then finding out that the rules have been changed and you need to redo your work (plus any expenses that may have been accrued).
Exactly. The problem is that now [b]you[/b] are left to be the one who also has to inform the players of an 11th hour change that no one expects and you did not initiate, because the USCF didn't tell them instead.