I was planning on setting up a chess 960 tournament to take place next month. By rote I was about to submit an online TLA. I then realized that I had no idea whether that was allowed, as obviously chess 960 would not use USCF ratings. Would I still be allowed to advertise my tournament via TLA regardless?
Furthermore, I’ve always put in unrated side events as part of the TLA. I’m now wondering if this is allowed either. Are you only allowed to advertise rated events?
Finally, would advertising an entirely unrated scholastic chess tournament with TLA also be banned? I would love to know.
At least the first two parts have been done before, and I’m pretty sure the “entirely unrated” as well (although that’s tougher to search considering that unrated players are almost always addressed in a TLA):
Chess 960 pairings could use US Chess ratings, but the event cannot (currently) be US Chess rated.
There was some talk a while back about adding a ratings system for Chess 960, it may not have generated enough interest to be worth doing.
You’d have to ask the publications department about whether you can advertise Chess 960 events, I seem to recall there was some discussion about having a category for that separate from other ‘unrated’ events/sections. US Chess usually promotes the bughouse events at national events it runs, so there’s certainly precedent for it.
I once was at a tournament that had USCF Rated and Unrated sections and a player who had not had 4 games published and was technically Unrated and thought he had to play in the Unrated section. Good news for him he won all his games easily and the prize - bad news for all the rest is they never had a chance and his wins were a waste of time (A player strength against <1000 strength)
When talking about sections that will not be rated by USCF I try to avoid using Unrated (better is Non-Rated or Not USCF Rated ?)