Time controls and ratings affected

I just got the new rules book. I’m most of the way through. I got into a discussion at the club with a fellow player about time controls and which time controls affect which ratings (vis-a-vis dual ratings and overlaps). He cares, I don’t, but his understandng and mine don’t sync, so I go online to see if someone has simplified info this specific subject. I Google it, Lo-and-behold i get a USCF page. I’m at the source now. I get this page;

uschess.org/archive/ratings/info/time.html

“Allowable Time Controls”

Which does not help me and has amongst other gems;

“Blitz chess, G/5 is not rated by the USCF. Sudden Death controls of less then 10 minutes are not permitted in USCF rated play.”

Is this some OLD page that needs to be taken down or edited? Misinformation from the supposed source is bad. And looks bad.

I think Mike Nolan has suggested there are over a million orphan pages that are out there that are not supported any longer and no one knows where all of those are. As a general rule, I think we can consider any page that directs people to the office in New Windsor obsolete.

Alex Relyea

It isn’t a million, but it is in excess of 20,000. If the breadcrumbs trail for a page includes ‘archive’ you should anticipate that it probably is not current.

I think at one time we had a disclaimer banner on those pages that said they might no longer be current, but I think it disappeared in one of the web page system updates.

I once suggested we move all those pages over to a separate site, using one of the dozens of domain names we own so that someone else doesn’t grab them, but that was never approved.

It looks like you have two questions here. First seems to be about “dual rated” time controls. Second appears to be about those out of date US Chess pages.

So, what is your “dual rated” time control question–based on the new rulebook?

Never mind…I see you posted your question in a different thread.

My problem is that somewhere back in time (like the 4th rule book) I misunderstood some of the rating/time details. with changes since then my confusion only compounded, working off of bad assumptions.

My understanding now is;

from 5 to 10 minute (inclusive) is blitz
from > 10 to < 30 (not inclusive of 10 and 30) is quick
from 30 to 65 (inclusive) is dual

65 is regular

no scorekeeping blitz and quick (5 to < 30)

Hopfully, this is scorrect.

Looks right to me, as long as you understand that your numbers (5, 10, 30, 65) are referring to main time in minutes plus increment or delay time in seconds. That wasn’t true in the 4th edition.

For example, G/29 inc/3 would be regular, not quick, because 29+3 = 32.

Bill Smythe

In addition to the above, the minimum base time for blitz must be at least 3 minutes and the minimum base time for quick, dual, and regular must be at least 5.

One exception to the above is that if a tournament has some rounds/schedules with time controls that fall in the dual range and some rounds/schedules that fall in the regular-only range, all of the games only get regular rated. There is no rule in the rulebook that states this. A TD Tip explains the procedure that is used for tournaments with multiple schedules where the faster schedule games fall in the dual range and the slower schedule games fall in the regular range but, as some people are very quick to point out, TD Tips are not rules.

There is actually no rule that states that scorekeeping is not required in quick and blitz. It states in a TD Tip that scorekeeping is not required in quick but again, as some people are very quick to point out, TD Tips are not rules.

I certainly agree with the concept that there should be a lower limit for mm by itself, in addition to an allowable range for mm+ss, for all event types (regular, quick, blitz).

But it is a continuing sore point for me that this minimum for mm is 5 minutes. For regular, this is ridiculous. It allows an organizer to run a regular-rated event at G/5 d/25. A few organizers have done just that, perhaps partly to draw attention to the absurdity.

I would prefer to adhere to the principle that the ss portion of mm+ss should be allowed to contribute at most 5 regular, 3 quick, or 2 blitz to the mm+ss total. That would be equivalent to the following:

Regular: mm+ss at least 30, and mm by itself at least 25.
Quick: mm+ss between 11 and 29 inclusive, and mm by itself at least 8.
Blitz: mm+ss between 5 and 10 inclusive, and mm by itself at least 3.

As it stands now, the first two are 5 (rather than 25 and 8), while the third is already 3. The first two need to be changed.

That rule was in the 4th and 5th editions, but somehow disappeared from the 6th and 7th. Rather than “fixing” this with a TD Tip, the rule itself should be restored, but as we all know, it’s harder to do that than to add a TD Tip.

Bill Smythe