When you are creating a rating report for a US Chess rated tournament using the current version of SwissSys (9.55), one of the questions you have to answer for each section is “Rating system” and you have the options of clicking on “Regular”, “Quick”, “Dual”, or “Blitz”. Does this question serve any purpose? When you upload the tournament, the rating system a section will be rated in all depends on what time control you enter (another required question for each section when creating a US Chess rating report using the current version of SwissSys).
This is a question for Mr. Suits.
Alex Relyea
I was thinking he might not know everything that happens on USCF’s end of things once a tournament is uploaded to the USCF website.
During validation the time control information for a section determines whether it is Blitz, Quick-Only, Dual or Regular-Only. For ICC and chess.com, the only affiliates currently authorized to run Online-Blitz and Online-Quick events, the time control determines whether it is Online-Blitz or Online-Quick.
The original upload format had a field for ‘rating system type’, it is now superfluous.
Thanks, I will let Thad know.
He said he left it on for backward compatibility but will probably be taking if off before too long.
There are certainly valid reasons why a pairing program might want to know what ratings system will be used, but at this point the time control unambiguously determines what OTB or online rating system applies. Whether that will continue to remain the case is up to the Delegates.
I have seen no compelling reason to take it out of WinTD. It’s not a big deal and taking something out that’s been there (for years) would probably create questions that really shouldn’t need to be answered. (It’s also a field that still in the 2c spec even though (at this point) it’s ignored. The key is that you have to put in a time control.
Keeping something that no longer needs to be there would probably also create questions that really shouldn’t need to be answered.
That’s a design question, and the people who actually create things get to make that decision. To date, we have had precisely zero questions about it. I get more questions about how to install the software on an antique XP laptop.
One recurring problem that Thad and I and Mike or whoever at USCF have is that many TD’s are very slow to adopt new versions of the software. (Needlessly) making changes that might be undone by a future policy isn’t a good idea. It’s possible that it will be used in the future as a check for whether the T/C information is accurate. (And again, it’s still part of the spec).