Scholastic Blitz Rules Question

Running Chess Tournaments
1

The USCF recently changed its Blitz rules to a modified format of the old WBCA rules. These rules are now in effect and are posted at:
main.uschess.org/images/stories/ … v.2007.pdf

The USCF Scholastic Committee posted its revised blitz rules (Aug 2007) in this document:
uschess.org/tournaments/2006/blitzrules.pdf

The official USCF rules now state that blitz is touch move, as it has always been in serious WBCA and USCF rated events.
The Scholastic rules state: “A2.3 The Chief Tournament Director has the discretion of Touch Move or Clock Move. However, whichever is used it must be listed on the USCF website in an appropriate easy-to-find location. Clock Move is recommended.”

This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. The Official USCF rules are Touch Move while the scholastic rules are recommending Clock Move. This will seriously effect kids who play in adult blitz because they will have to shift rule sets in their mind from tournament to tournament. The USCF seems to bend backwards trying to have kids get ready for FIDE-rated tournaments by implementation of any new policy FIDE adopts, yet within our own organization we have 2 sets of blitz rules.

Is the correct and is it logical? If not, shouldn’t the scholastic community join the rest of the world?

Michael Atkins

2

Amen. Clock-move is an abomination which should be abolished from the face of the earth, even in K-3 events.

Bill Smythe

3

I think that clock-move should definitely be discouraged in any format. The practice is rather deeply ingrained in club and casual environments, but it is against the rules in rated events. I say it’s worth a few broken crayons to enforce touch-move at the K-3 level.