Hello, I am building up tournament experience to make the push to Senior level TD. However, I was curious about what category of tournament a quad is. Is it technically a round robin, and so if the mean rating is over 1400 would it be category R? Quads typically have three rounds, and so wouldn’t qualify for anything else. However sections of the quad are oftentimes Swiss, and so would those sections be included as part of the entrant count?
Also, if I ran a 60 person quad with a mean rating of below 1400 it wouldn’t qualify for any experience records. Are you allowed to only use part of the quad that has a mean rating of above 1400 for the record? How do unrated players factor into this average? It seems punishing that I would have to restrict players with a lower rating from participating when I already have more then 8 players above 1400.
It also seems odd to me that only a single quad would be allowed to be used as a substitution for a single a3 credit. Is it true that I can only use one of this type of tournament on my application?
The Round Robin Tournament
30A. Description.
This tournament format is also known as all-play-all. Formerly the almost-exclusive format for chess competitions, the round robin is most often used now for important events where time is not a factor, club events with one game per week, and one-day four-player events known as quads.
Now, for Category R you do need 6 participants, so I can see an argument that a quad can’t make it to Category R as multiple 3-round sections can’t be aggregated.
Welcome to another unclear area of the rules, much like the questions for Senior TD.
Testing Requirement.
Difficult objective examination designed to evaluate the applicant’s knowledge and judgment in situations not clearly addressed by the rules.
(Consider how knowledge and judgment in unclear situations can ever be examined other than subjectively).
Quads do not fall into the categories for advancement. Categories A through D are all Swisses. Category R requires six players with an average rating of 1400+ (three 1500s and three 1300s would do it). if you have eight players and are limited to three rounds then a three round Swiss would work (many call it an Octagon). Category D allows swisses to be only three rounds. Categories A, B and C require at least four rounds.
The category definitions are only for the requirements needed for advancement. If a tournament doesn’t meet those definitions then it does not fall into such a category.
What textual materials are you basing this on, in light of the Rulebook’s definition of a quad as a round-robin and quads being able to accommodate an unlimited number of players?
…put another way, if a round-robin tournament had two sections of 5 players, what in the category R definition would not include that 10 player tournament?
Category R (for certification advancement) is a six-player (or more) round robin in a single section with an average rating of 1400+ A round robin has everybody playing everybody else, so two (or three) sections of quads only have each person playing three others (not five).
You are correct that a quad is a round robin, but the assumption that any round robin is a category R event is an erroneous assumption.
Also, any assumption that EVERY tournament has to fall into at least one of the listed categories is also an erroneous assumption.
In the spirit of the advancement requirements, I think it would be the other way around in that you would need the textual support that you could aggregate quads somehow to satisfy a category R - An 8 player 2 section quad is 3 rounds and 12 games whereas a 1 section 8 player RR is 7 rounds 28 games. Even though you only have to deal with 8 players in each - quite clear which one is a tougher to direct.
If I were king, I probably would make a category “Q60” – Regular Rated Quads with 60+ participants - and make that be a substitute for one of the 10 when going for Senior.
…that’s not what the written certification rules say, though, so I’d like to know where you took the “in a single section” requirement from and how TDs are reasonably expected to know that based on the written rules.
Category R.
A US Chess rated over-the-board round robin tournament of six or more rated entrants with a mean rating of at least 1400, with the mean being calculated by using the ratings of the players in the applicable ratings supplement on the starting date of the event.
There is no “in a single section” language there, and there is language in other categories that makes distinctions (such as A / C).
The support is there. A quad is a round robin per the rules and a quad tournament can have 6 or more players in different sections. This is similar to how a Category B tournament doesn’t have to have 100 players in a single section to be a Category B tournament.
ulmont, the reason the Category R description doesn’t say in a single section is because the general US Chess rule 30A already says that a round robin tournament is one where all play all. Adding together multiple quads fails the definition of all play all (all play at most 3/7 of the opponents, not 7/7).
To reiterate, individual quads are round robins of four players but they do not combine to be round robins of six or more players (meeting the Category R definition) because summing them makes them does not make them a larger round robin (no longer satisfying all plays all) but rather a collection of small round individual round robins.
Another part of the definition of a round robin is that they also do pairings using the Crenshaw tables. That is one place where a round robin directed Swiss may falter when trying to retroactively make a five round six player Swiss into a round robin.
ulmont, I already said a quad is a round robin, but it is not large enough to satisfy the category R requirement. Not every tournament satisfies a certification requirement category. Two quads are NOT an eight player round robin (none of the players played all of the other seven) and that would also fail to satisfy the category R requirement. Any tournament of 6 or more players with each playing everybody else in that tournament would qualify if it also met the average rating requirement.
That is similar to why a tournament with three sections of 18 and 16 and 14 players playing a four round Swiss plus one section of two different players playing an extra rated game is NOT a category C event. The event may have 50 players but only 48 of those players were playing in a Swiss-paired section of the tournament.
A tournament with 8 octagons (3-round Swiss for 8 players) would not satisfy a Category C requirement (has to be at least a four-round Swiss).
You are welcome to appeal to the office regarding how the TD Certification Committee applies the TD Certification rules.
Jeff Wiewel
2024-2025 chair of TDCC
PS like the quads tournament you cited here is another tournament that does not fall into any category https://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?202003136562-10336015
since the onset of Covid meant it was only two rounds and even a category D tournament requires three rounds. Not every tournament is in one of the certification categories.
PPS even tournaments that are not in a certifation category can still be used to meet the activity requirements for renewal without requiring a retest (used to require chief or chief assistant but TDCC was doing a regular look at the certification rules and decided to allow any TD working an event to use the event for activity purposes - the EB then approved that TDCC-initiated modification)
ulmont, I said a quad is a round robin, but it is not large enough to satisfy the category R requirement. Not every tournament satisfies a certification requirement category. Two quads are NOT an eight player round robin (none of the players played all of the other seven) and that would also fail to satisfy the category R requirement.
So your position is that a tournament defined as a round robin by the rules and having 6 players per the event listed online is nonetheless not a round robin with 6 players? Have you considered changing the text so it says what you want it to say clearly?
It’s not relevant to me, so I don’t think I can, but I would urge you to get away from a “the rules mean what we say they mean” approach toward a “the rules say what they say” approach.
IMHO, if you have two quads, you may have a total of 8 players but you do NOT have an 8 player Round Robin event, because none of the players are playing all 7 different opponents.
I totally acknowledge jwiewel’s expertise in that quads will not qualify for TD’s advancement. That is what the rules state. Thanks for the answer to my question!
Separately, I am also curious as to why that is. I’ve assumed that the TD certification rules are designed so that a TD must have a certain level of experience with all needed aspects of directing before advancement. That is why there are requirements on submitting tournaments online, why to advance to ANTD there are prize fund minimums, why there are entrant count considerations for every level.
Swiss style tournaments are obviously exceedingly important for directors, as learning how to pair events is vital. However, I’m curious as to why a quad event cannot qualify for a substitution for the Assistant TD certifications, much like blitz, online, and round robin tournaments. In my mind these substitutions were put in place to acknowledge that there are many different ways directors can acquire experience, and to take into account these other types of experience. Were quad events excluded because they do not give directors experience with pairing procedures? Or because there would have been too many possible substitutions for those credits? Or for any other reason I haven’t thought of.
This is not meant to in any way knock on the TD Certification Committee, they do a fantastic job. I’m just curious as to the intent behind the design of the system.
Things happen in larger round robins with higher rated players and a larger spread in ratings that don’t happen as often in quads where all the players are usually close to each other in rating. Plus those types of RR events are more likely to be for some kind of championship, which quads almost never are.
So I understand why it is desirable to have an R event for advancement.