Hi,
I am looking forward to participating in 30th Annual US Amateur Team Championship West - Pleasanton, CA that will be held between 16-18th Feb 2013! While I may end up joining an existing team, I am looking forward to create a new team of my own. My current USCF rating is 1955 but I have a few friends who are unrated by play moderately. Can I form a team with all unrated players except board#1 where I will play? Where can I find more rules about team chess?
Looking on the web site for the USATW from last year, unrated are treated as having a rating of zero for board placement purposes (unless the TD assigns a different rating on a player by player basis) and thus can only play behind all of the rated players. It didn’t mention anything about how they affect the team rating.
Looking at the USATN web site from last year, unrateds can play on any board. An unrated on board 4 affects the team rating as if the player was 50 points below board three. An unrated on board three and two is treated as having an average rating of the two boards on each side. An unrated on board one is treated as 50 points above board two.
Using those USATN rules for the USATW (with no guarantees that it would be done that way) your team rating would seem to be (1955+1905+1855+1805)/4 = 1880. For a real answer, contact the organizer.
Another option would be to have them play in a rated tournament during the next two weekends (assuming the tournament would be rated almost immediately) and thus have actual provisional ratings when the January supplement is cut (now that the deadline for cutting the supplements has been moved later in the month). That would get rid of the guesswork.