I’ve never attended law school, so I need some help interpreting the TD certification experience requirements.
My specific question refers to page 249 of the Official Rules of Chess, 5th edition. Section 30b (experience requirements for Senior Director) reads in part:
“30b. Satisfactory performance as chief TD of five or more additional Swiss system tournaments of at least four rounds, …”
My question: Do these have to be regular rated tournaments, or do quick rated events count equally for this requirement?
On the one hand, I would argue that the text reads simply “five or more additional Swiss system tournaments” with no additional qualification.
On the other hand, section 30a draws a distinction between “Category C tournaments” and “Quick Chess Category C, C1, or C2 tournaments.”
Interestingly, as far as I can tell from a careful reading of the “Tournament Categories” portion of chapter 7 (sections 14 through 21), the definition of tournament categories is independent of whether the event is quick rated.
I would also like to ask a more general question. Why is there in general a distinction between quick rated events and regular rated events? Admittedly, there is an effect on some of the rules, but the difference seems rather small. (For example, section 13C, “Time Forfeit,” requires a reasonably complete score sheet to claim a win in a non-sudden death time control but not in a sudden-death time control.)
Section 1 is listed as two rounds and 16 players, but as only two of them are distinct, the tournament only lists two players. It is perhaps less obvious, but you can see the same effect in tournaments with extra rated sections.
I’m a long way away from senior TD myself - but here’s why I think regular rated is more important for that level certification. It really comes down to regular rating, slower time controls, bigger prized events are taken more seriously by the players; tend to be more stressful to the players (and so bring out a greater percentage of less-than-exemplary behavior); and are more likely to have problems that draw into question knowledge, judgement, and integrity issues. And those are the kinds of events that the USCF cares about being represented fairly and clearly at.
The great thing about the USCF rating system - or rather the USCF system of sanctioning tournaments - is that I can go to any state of the union and play in a USCF tournament and know what to expect … whether it’s equipment, delay clocks (oh no - here we go again …), pairing rules, prize division, and so on. Big money, big section tournaments are comparatively fewer in number; more noticed by national media; and so on; and the procedures, organization, and consistency of those events have to meet a higher standard.
I kind of see it as you are not ready to be a senior TD unless you’ve already been baptized by some fire … several times. It’s not possible to write that objectively in the rules so they word the requirements in easily measurable terms.
But what they want is people with a proven track record to make tournament problems un-noticed
Well Alex even looked at my old records and they have changed. It must be the new rating program, as for years it just kept the numbers growing and growing. Not sure when the change did happen. Recall a time talking to Larry Pond on the phone, was shocked when he ask if I wanted to take the Senior Tournament Directors test. Reason I was shocked, as I never had a category C event before. It was the very small and very boring events back in the good old days that raised the level past 50. Even that it only had a few players, the numbers did keep growing till it was past 50.
Glad that Mike did fix the long term problem, as I was finding it so annoying knowing only 6 people can end as a category C event. Not sure if Larry will let me take the test now since the rating program fixed the problem. Gee, if I did take that test and pass it would have been strange!
There is a list of USCF committee chairmen with e-mail addresses at uschess.org/org/govern/.
The problem raised by your question is that the rules were written on the assumption that there was a single rating system. “Quick Chess” has been around for a decade, but it never really caught on, and frankly such events were both too rare and too insignificant to be worth much attention from the TDCC. Now that a few people have begun to raise the issue, it will have to be dealt with, but that’s not going to happen here.
Well, I have not attended law school either; however, as the chair of the TDCC and the chief editor of the 5th edition I might have some answers for you.
Your observation that there is a small effect on the rules between regular and quick events is not shared by the TDCC. Those scoresheet skills, among other things, are important. By the way scoresheets are used for more than just proof that a certain number of moves have not been made in a given time. They are also used in making various other claims (like draws). Given that the USCF rates both regular and quick events it is important that the experience requirements cover both kinds of tournaments. After all there is no such thing as a “quick rated only” (or even a “scholastic only”) TD certification.
All the requirements, unless otherwise stated, refer to regular rated games. A statement to that effect probably should have been printed in the 5th edition. Possibly in the future such a statement will appear.
Fair enough. I guess I could be snarky and suggest that since the TDCC considers the difference between quick rated events and regular rated events to be nontrivial, then the experience requirements should require experience with both types of events!
I hope that my comment about “law school” did not offend anyone. I only meant that I personally found the wording of chapter 7 to be somewhat difficult to penetrate. In particular, I do appreciate that the committee went out of its way to allow sections of tournaments to qualify for experience requirements (hence the addition of categories such as C1 and C2 in the fifth edition). However, I’m afraid the text left me with a bad case of “brain itch.”
If I could push my luck and ask one more question about the definition of tournament categories: Does the definition of categories B1, B2, C1, and C2 make assumptions about the size of the particular section? For instance, for one section of a category C event to qualify as either C1 or C2, must that section itself comprise 50 to 99 players?
Good point. Realize that if you have experience with “regular” rated events it is easy to not use some of those “regular rated” TD skills to direct a "quick’ rated event. It does not work well the other way around. Your idea of creating more requirements (both regular and quick events) might meet some resistance; i.e., there is a movement to drop requirements, not add to them.
In practice any section of any event that meets the numbers requirement (50 players, 100 players, …) gets counted; i.e., you could get credit for a “C” or even a “C1” event at a section at a tournament that overall qualifies as an “A” or “B” event. Yeah, I know it does not read that way but that is how it is used in practice.
Also, those b1 and c1 designations, for example, exist to allow a TD that worked at single section (or even multi-sectioned) “B” or “C” event to get some credit if they were only a “floor” or only “backroom” TD. That way they could mix and match those “floor” and “backroom” experiences to = being the chief (both floor and backroom) of such an event. Clear as mud!?
No, I was not offended by the “lawyer” comment. In fact that whole section probably needs some re-writing. Those rules were written for regular rated events many years ago. Quick chess came along and there were enough requests for TD credit for “quick” events and “large sections” of regular rated events to justify coming up with something. So, all the add-on verbage. That is why it is so hard to read.
The following statistics might be interesting in the context of this discussion.
Since the new rating system went live on February 14th, we have rated 3115 sections that were regular-rated only. These sections had a total of 65,815 players and 148,955 games.
4534 sections, 78,589 players and 166,834 games were dual-rated.
985 sections, 10,967 players and 24,835 games were quick-rated only.
Hmm – so over half of regular-rated games are played at game/60 or faster? I guess the rating committee’s goal of increasing the number of players with quick ratings is rapidly being achieved.
Largely true, I suppose, but certain kinds of “skills” are more useful (or come up more often) in quick-rated events than regular-rated – for example, counting to 50 moves (per player) during a time scramble, or trying to notice on-the-fly whether there has been a triple occurrence of position.
It would be virtually impossible, however, to test these skills with a written exam!
