The new US Open 7-Day Schedule has the rounds like this: 7pm 7/28, 10am & 7pm 7/29, 10am & 7pm 7/30, 7pm 7/31, 7pm 8/1, 7pm 8/2, 3pm 8/3.
Just curious, is anyone actually looking forward to playing a 5-hour+ game on 7/28 and 7/29 that can go past midnight and then have to be back by 10am the next morning for another potential 5-hour+ game? Why have such awful conditions?
Do you have a counter-proposal? One that still fits within the 7 day US Open footprint and facilitates holding the concurrent Invitationals in the same room? Fortunately, there is such a thing as a 1/2 point bye.
Maybe move the morning rounds from 10am to noon (the five-day schedule has the rounds at noon and 7pm on 8/1). Also, shortening the time control, 40/100,SD/30;inc30, a little would help as well (heck, the US Championship itself, which the US Open is a qualifier for, has been using 40/90,SD/30;inc30 for a while now so why does the US Open need a longer time control than that?).
If players feel the need to take a half-point bye for the 10am rounds because of the schedule, there is something wrong with the format.
The Invitationals factor into this equation too. For now, I’m going to trust the folks who worked on the schedule for the 7 day US Open footprint over the last year to have come up with the best schedule. By the way, a five hour game in the morning and a meal before potentially playing another 5 hour game is no bargain rest-wise either. The good news is that we are talking about rounds early in the US Open, where 5 hour games are far less likely (though I had one in Orlando once.
When I try to look at the schedule I get “Access denied. Check with your site administrator if you need assistance.”. So I do not know the time controls.
The increment time controls of the invitationals can (as Mike said above) have an impact. Even though the base time was less the increment meant that invitational games could go way longer than US Open games. A game going well past the six hour mark with a noon start time can delay the 7 PM round. A 10 AM start time still allows for 7 PM to be met with no problems.
Adjusting the schedule to noon to accommodate the occasional long game evening game can risk impacting everybody else’s evening game if there is one long afternoon game. Is it better to risk one pair of players having a shorter night’s sleep or to risk every player having a delay starting that can impact their sleep? Remember that some of the local players will be working during the day and have to get up at 6 AM (or earlier). Delaying the evening round is not going to be well received.
Since I cannot see the time control I am not certain, but if the noon games have delay instead of increment then the odds of a long game are way less even if the increment game has a shorter base time. Last weekend there were Chicago Open games with strong players using delay 30 that went much longer than increment 30 games in other CCA events the same weekend with the same time controls (only differences were delay versus increment and the Chicago Open being a larger tournament with more players).
Here’s a link to the page with time controls.
U.S. Open Round Times | US Chess.org One should keep in mind that the 7 day schedule is the best we could do to simulate the old 9 day schedule. Those players are used to having the longest possible break before their game. A long game, with a 30 second incrrement, starting at noon, would be horrible, potentially.
I seem to recall OP being widely criticized on the forum for not being willing to build in a decent break in one of his events (I don’t recall if it was a 2 day or 1 day event) in case of a long game. He rejected the advice then because the possibility of a long game was so remote. Interesting to see him on the other side of that fence, in this admittedly very different situation.
For me there is a website issue. The link above goes to my membership page with “Access denied. Check with your site administrator if you need assistance.” What are the time controls?
Time Control:
7-Day Schedule: all rounds 40/100, SD/30, inc/30 (30-second increment from move one)
5-Day Schedule: rounds 1-5 at G/90 d5 rounds 6-9 at 40/100, SD/30, inc/30
4-Day Schedule: rounds 1-6 at G/60 d5 rounds 7-9 at 40/100, SD/30, inc/30
Is this backwards? It looks like you said:
And it seems like 2 undercuts 1.
Last year there was an invitational G/90;+30 game that lasted longer into the night than a regular US Open game. That increment can cause long games in the Irwin (Senior) event and the Denker is another where that might happen. Round six in the five day might cause a delay in the merged round seven Friday evening, but round eight is not until Saturday evening.
To answer Ulmont, strong players can make games run longer with delay versus weaker players using increment. If the strong players are also using increment then they can run way, way longer. If the Chicago Open had increment instead of delay then the schedule would almost certainly have fallen significantly behind. A schedule merge round is more at risk than others, so merge rounds are generally scheduled for the final round of the day.
We did some website reconfiguration yesterday evening to complete the move from the old info, registration and advance entry pages for the US Open to the new ones. All the old links (to www.uschess.org pages) should now redirect to new.uschess.org pages with the main page for the 2025 US Open being US Open 2025 | US Chess.org. (The pairings and results pages may not be functional yet but we’ve got 2 months to get that done.)
This will be the model for future national events.
Correspondence events are still using the old registration site but that will change as soon as they have all those pages working. This is part of the planned phase-out of the current www.uschess.org and secure2.uschess.org systems.
You might need to clear cache or restart your browser/computer.
I was able to access all the US Open schedule pages just now.
If none of those fixes work, we may need more information in order to reproduce the problem.
Mike, signing out let me access the schedule. Signing back in made it inaccessible again. Emanuel fixing something in the back made it accessible even when signed in.
The round times for the US Open schedules and the Invitationals have been coordinated in a way that minimizes the chance that any group will be coming into the main playing hall to set up while another group is already playing. The one exception to this is round 4 in the 4-day schedule, which will be at 10 PM on Thursday. However, this conflict has been in effect for a number of years without any noticeable disturbance, so it has been left unchanged.
One possible area of concern is that on Wednesday, the 7-day, 5-day, and Invitationals all have a round at 7 PM in the main playing hall. Also, on Thursday morning, the 5-day, 4-day, and Invitationals all have a round at 10 AM. The Director of Events expressed confidence that any potential capacity issue could be dealt with by appropriating space in the skittles areas.
This is the first year of the new 7-day format. Depending on how things go with the current schedule, there may be adjustments made in succeeding years.
– Hal Terrie (US Open Committee Chair)