The chart on the quad results form matches the Crenshaw-Berger table for 3-4 players exactly, and this is what the rules specify:
30G. Quads.
Quadrangular tournaments divide the entrants into groups of four in rating order. The four highest-rated players then play three-game round robins following the Crenshaw tables.
I think the part about drawings lots would be for assigning the pairing numbers instead of just relying on ratings to do so.
The variant should say that you can assign the pairing numbers randomly (the FIDE method) but if you follow the variant as worded in the document it could “potentially enable player 3 to get white three times and allow player 2 to get black three times”.
Hi Louis, The issue is with the first variation, which should have third instead of first so that it would remain consisten with the rulebook. Micah said he’d e-mail the appropriate person.
uschess.org/docs/forms/QuadResultsSheet.pdf
3 4
VARIATIONS
(To be used only if announcement is
made in advance of the first round)
Thanks, Micah. Let me know if there is anything you need from me in the meantime. Hopefully this will be a quick and easy fix for John Hartmann or Joan Dubois.
I agree with your analysis. I cannot imagine what purpose is served by running a quad where a player could have the same color three times, even if it is just a “variant.” The language should read “third round” rather than “first round,” which would make the variant reasonable.
I agree, although it shouldn’t be listed as a variant since doing the third round colors randomly is the “preferred” and only method given in the rulebook.
I would prefer to have quads paired under the same rules as round robins for 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, etc players. As given in the rulebook, the algorithm for 4 players does not fit into the pattern used for all the larger numbers of players.
AND I would prefer that the rules for ALL section sizes would say “Use a single coin toss to determine whether to pair the top section in rating order or in reverse rating order” and “Alternate rating order down the sections”, e.g. if the top section is in rating order, the second section should be in reverse rating order, etc.
This single coin toss provides absolutely all the randomness necessary. In particular, it becomes a 50-50 proposition whether the top-rated player gets an extra white or an extra black.
Bill Smythe
You could always try to get a delegate to submit an ADM on this.
The five/six player table also follows a different logic than the larger tables (which all have 1-2 in the penultimate round instead of the first round for six players or the last round for four players). Without looking at the tables I can calculate any round for the 7/8 through 13/14 players and extrapolate to larger numbers. The two smaller tables require looking at the book or memorizing them (well, they are also small enough to make memorization relatively easy).
The others have a base starting point of (for an even player count of X):
X/2 vs X X-1 vs 1 X-2 vs 2
X/2-1 vs x/2 1 vs X-2 2 vs X-3 X vs X-1
X/2 vs X/2-2 X-3 vs 1 X-4 vs 2 X/2-1 vs X (for the 7/8 player table the first and the third columns are the same and this is only three of the four pairings for the round)
X/2-3 vs X/2 1 vs X-4 2 vs X-5 X vs X-2
…
X/2 vs X/2+3 3 vs 1 2 vs X
X/2+2 vs X/2 1 vs 2 X vs X/2+1
X/2 vs X/2+1 1 vs X 2 vs X-1
For players with a pairing number less than X/2, any time a calculation would pair a player against himself the player gets paired against player X (players in the top have get white against X while players in the bottom half get black).
Because of the way the charts work, if you already have more than six players in the round robin then you can add two more before round two by changing the original last seed’s pairing number to the new total number of players and saying that round three was played before round one with the one game needing to be made up between the two additions.
Example
8 players had round one pairings of
7-1 6-2 5-3 4-8
The 10 player round three pairing is
7-1 6-2 5-3 4-10 8-9
Change 8’s pairing number to 10, say that round three was played first and the 8-9 game needs to be made up. You are now good to go.
If you add four players to an eight-player round robin then look at round five on the 12-player table
7-1 6-2 5-3 4-12 8-11 9-10
Change 8 to 12, say that round five was played first and the 8-11 and 9-10 games need to be made up.
PPS adding four players is pushing it, so adding any more would strongly indicate instead creating a new round robin of the adds (for that matter four players could play a double-quad and play their final round the same time an 8-player round robin would finish - with no games needing to be made up).
I can produce pairing tables that do conform to the rules for every size RR. Select Crenshaw, the number of players, then Click. It should be identical to the USCF tables for players 8 or more. rrpair
That’s fine, but are these tables accompanied by any guidance as to how the players should be ordered? If the pairing numbers are always top-to-bottom in rating order, then the top-rated player in each section will always get an extra white.
Bill Smythe
Yes, as a matter of fact (assuming we’re talking about the tables given in the rulebook). On the page immediately preceding the tables, it says: “Pairing numbers are assigned by lot at the beginning of the event, unlike Swiss tournaments in which pairing numbers are determined by ratings.”
It gives no specifics about how the “assigning by lot” is to be done, but the second clause makes it clear that it is not to be done by ratings. Ideally, the order would be random.
Again, it would suffice to place the players in either rating order or reverse rating order, depending on the toss of a single coin. That would make it 50-50 whether the top-rated player (or any other player) would get an extra white or an extra black. That would be true in any size round robin.
Why not keep it simple? A single coin toss would provide all the randomness necessary.
Bill Smythe
And for a round robin where qualification comes from standings in a club’s season-long competition (the season might be almost a year long) then the lots could be standings based (a high-rated player that doesn’t attend as often may end up significantly lower on the ladder that a lower-rated player that attended all the time).
Comparing an 8-player round robin with the NFL play-offs, the extra white that the top four seeds have is a significantly weaker advantage than the bye and initial home game that the top four NFL seeds have.
In the Round Robins I have played in, there was a drawing of lots before the first round for placement on the chart. Then the pairings each round were based on following the given pairing table from the Rulebook. This appears to be how many of the classic old chess tournaments used to be managed. At the end of the tournament, the players by finish and/or tiebreak would be reordered. They did not have ratings to use to set up pairings. The tables tell you how many Whites you have, so there were always “lucky” numbers to get. Sometimes you were “unlucky” if you ended up with a murder’s row of strong players to play in a sequence because that is how the drawing of lots went.
A quad is so easy, it is really hard to mess up unless you overthink it and add unnecessary drama. I would ignore the writing of a variant on the chart and just follow the Rulebook on player assignment. As the TD, you have leeway to do a number of things, but there is no point messing up the easy stuff you have control over just because it is possible to nitpick it. TDs I know have always placed players by lot rather than rating on the Quad chart to have variability and randomness in colors for the type of tournament where the “usual suspects” show up all of the time. In longer Round Robins, I have seen player placement by lot and by rating. When placement by rating was used, it did favor the higher rated, or rather a few of the higher rated, but in the long run the advantage of having an extra White is usually minimal and is more psychological than real if you go by what Andras Adorjan has to say on the matter.
I emailed John Hartmann and Joan Dubois about this a while back but the USCF Quadrangular Tournament Chart hasn’t been fixed. Any other suggestions on getting it fixed?
I guess not
As I read through this thread, it doesn’t appear that there was a consensus on exactly what to change. I wouldn’t expect the office to make what is in essence a rules decision.
As to changing things without getting the proper imprimaturs, look at the fuss being made over the figurine notation scoresheet.
This was created in 2009 as a PDF out of a Word doc. It’s an easy fix if (and that’s a big if) the original Word file can be found. If not, the bloody thing sat on the web site for 11 years with a glaring error in it, which probably indicates how little it got used.
(It might be also be fixable directly using Acrobat, but I don’t have a copy of that any longer).
This still has not been fixed.
It will get fixed after there is a vaccine for COVID-19. Seriously, this is not a big thing. Ignore the variant like everyone else does, or make a copy of the form and whiteout the variant wording before use. Ta da, problem fixed. Not everything must be fixed by the US Chess office. Make your own forms. That is what we used to do before there were downloadable forms. Look at how many different scoresheets there are available for use. Some of them are better than what the “official” scoresheet looks like. Google it. Make a master copy.