I haven’t played a USCF tournament game in 15 years. I’m thinking of making my big comeback. However, i see bits and pieces of new rules, like digital clocks, time controls, cell phone usage, etc.
Would someone be nice enough to summarize any of these new rules for me here, i feel like such a dinosaur, i don’t want to walk into a tourney and behave like a dope 
Probably the biggest change in 15 years is the ubiquitous use of digital clocks. Although there are endless varieties of time controls, the main time control is either adding a certain number of seconds to your clock every time to punch the button, or a set delay in seconds before your clock starts to tick down.
For time bonus, FICS and ICS have plenty of games with bonus seconds. (I believe 2+12 is the standard for both servers).
Chess servers don’t use delay time controls, but in OTB play, generally a delay of 3 to 5 seconds for shorter games is common, and up to delay 30 seconds for longer games is common.
I wouldn’t say that. I’ve never seen a delay of other than five seconds used for any time control longer than GAME/30. Increments, that is cumulative delays, are used sometimes, though I wouldn’t say common, and they are always announced in advance. Unless you’re playing quick chess, I’d assume that a five second delay is standard.
Alex Relyea
I’m not sure this involves a rule change, or just the modification of a TD tip, but what is the current “official” status on changing the time control to adjust for delay. For example, a G/90 tournament where 5 second delay is allowed, but those using delay have to set their clocks to G/85.
I have searched the forum, and it has been talked about - the pithiest explanation I saw was “legal, but deprecated”. I guess the question is whether it is now something within a TD’s normal discretion or a variant that has to be advertised ahead of time (something people don’t expect to be the case, like not allowing delay).
It is common practice at our club, and I don’t mind doing it, but I was talking it over with the TD and there was a difference of opinion (I thought, based on what I’ve read in the forums, it is no longer considered appropriate, whereas he seemed to think it was common practice). Would be nice to get a third opinion - one that actually is authoritative.
The official status is still “legal but deprecated” as far as I know. I introduced a motion at the delegates’ meeting in 2008 to eliminate the practice; it failed narrowly, but fail it did.
I’d say that pretty much sums it up. It’s no longer considered appropriate, but it is common practice.
Alex Relyea
Another rule change is that pairing rules have changed. “Higher rated player gets his due color” is no longer the case. Something else that happens is that many (most?) TDs can’t explain why pairings are done a certain way, especially lower-ranked and less-experienced TDs. Everyone, in a section of any size, uses computers now.
Alex Relyea
A number of players with the older pairing rules erroneously thought it was higher-rated gets due color even when a lower-rated player had more points and was higher-ranked. Now with full color history you can get a situation like what happened at one US Open where a player in round 9 couldn’t understand why he got black against his opponent (same score, he was higher rated, they had both gone BW in rounds 1-2 and WBWB in rounds 5-8, but he had a black in round 3 and a bye in round 4 while his opponent had a bye in round 3 and black in round 4, so it alternated from his opponent’s round 4 black versus his colorless bye - BWbyeBWBWB gets white before BWBbyeWBWB).
At this point I’d guess that almost all NTDs can explain more complicated pairings (many did them by hand before computer programs were available and had to understand them before making them), most ANTDs can explain them, a lot of SeniorTDs, some LocalTDs and the occasional ClubTD. Also, TDs that don’t have a solid grasp of pairings won’t always recognize when they have settings on their pairing software that causes inferior pairings (the proper software settings can let the computer pair like an NTD while an oversight can cause the computer to pair like a LocalTD).