When will the details for the “2011 US Open” come out?
Thanks
It’s not official until it’s published but here is the most recent version of the TLA I have seen. Note the (extra)
experimental class prizes based on the new norm-based titles.
– Hal Terrie (Chair, U.S. Open Committee)
A Heritage Event
July 30-Aug 7, Aug 4-7 or 5-7, Florida
ChessLecture.com Grand Prix Points: 300
112th annual U.S. Open. Includes traditional one game per day schedule (9 days), also 6-day slow time control option, and 4-day option initiated 2009 requiring only 3 nights hotel stay for most players. 9SS, 40/2, SD/1 (4 day option, Rds. 1-6, G/60). Hyatt Regency Orlando Airport, 9300 Airport Blvd, Orlando FL 32827. Parking $4 to 2 am or $12 overnight. Free airport shuttle. HR: $99 single/quad, 407-825-1234, 800-233-1234, reserve by July 14 or rate may increase. $50,000 in prizes based on 500 paid entries, else proportional, except $40,000 (80% of each prize) minimum guarantee. A one section tournament with Class prizes. Top US player not otherwise qualified qualifies for 2012 US Championship. Many side events, including US Blitz Championship 8/6. USCF Delegates meeting 8/6-7, chess promotion workshops 8/3-5, USCF Awards Luncheon 8/6 noon, GM lectures & simuls to be announced. Choice of three schedules: Traditional: 40/2, SD/1. One round daily at 7 pm, except rd. 9, 3 pm 8/7. 6-Day Option: 7 pm 8/2, 12 noon & 7 pm 8/3-5, 7 pm 8/6, 3 pm 8/7. 4-Day Option: 2 pm, 5 pm & 8 pm 8/4; 10 am, 1 pm, 3:30 pm & 7 pm 8/5, 7 pm 8/6, 3 pm 8/7. All schedules merge after Round 6 & compete for same prizes. Projected prizes: Top places $8000-4000-2000-1500- 1000-700-500-400, clear winner $200 bonus. If tie for first, top two on tiebreak play speed game (white 5 minutes, black 3 minutes and gets draw odds, 5 second delay) for bonus and title. Regular Class Prizes: Top Master (2200-2399) $2400-1200-600-300, Expert (2000-2199) $2400-1200-600-300, Class A (1800-1999) $2400-1200-600-300, Class B (1600-1799) $2400-1200-600-300, Class C (1400-1599) $2000-1000-500-300, Class D (1200-1399) $1500-700-400-200, Class E or below (under 1200) $1200-600-400-200, Unrated $700-400-200. USCF Title-Based Class Prizes: Top Life Senior Master Under 2500 $600, top Life Master Under 2300, Original Life Master U2300, or Life Senior Master U2300 $500, top Candidate Master or higher title Under 2100 $500, top First Category or higher title Under 1900 $500, top Second Category or higher title Under 1700 $400, top Third Category or higher title Under 1500 $400, top Fourth Category or higher title Under 1300 $300. Foreign or FIDE titles do not qualify players for these prizes. Half Point Byes: must commit before round 4; up to 3 byes allowed for 2000/up, 2 byes for 1400-1999, one bye for Under 1400/Unr. Limit 1 bye in last two rounds. Zero point byes are always available in any round. Entry Fee: Online, $145 by 6/15, $165 by 7/27. By mail, $147 postmarked by 6/15, $167 postmarked by 7/21. By phone, $150 by 6/15, $170 by 7/27. At site, all $190; entries close 1 hour before your first game. Late entry with round 1 bye accepted until 4 pm 7/31, 11:30 am 8/3, or 4 pm 8/4. USCF full membership required (no tournament members). GMs free. August official ratings used; unofficial ratings used if otherwise unrated. CCA ratings used if above USCF. Foreign player ratings: usually 100 points added to FIDE or FQE, 200+ added to most foreign national ratings, no points added to CFC. Highest of multiple ratings generally used. Ent: USCF, ATTN: 2011 US Open, PO Box 3967, Crossville, TN 38557. Online entry: chessgolfmarathons@verizon.net.
Thank you for posting this. I was wondering about the details of this one myself, as I have to plan in advance if I have enough vacation time to play in this. Your top line with the dates seems to be inaccurate, though. You’re missing the dates for the 6 day schedule, and I don’t see how August 5-7 is accurate, since there doesn’t seem to be a 3 day schedule.
Speaking of the different schedules, I hate to whine, but you knew somebody would. 
It looks like the 6 day schedule will only amount to one less day off work (Monday) compared to the 9 day schedule for people like me who work weekdays and have to travel to Orlando on Tuesday. Yet, the 4 day schedule has the first 6 games at the much faster time control of G/60, which a lot of us don’t like. Any chance of considering a 5 day schedule, with 3 games at G/90 or something starting at noon Wednesday, then merge into the 6 day schedule on Thursday? For someone like me, it means I could save a vacation day from work by driving to Orlando (3 hours drive) after work on Tuesday (or Wednesday morning), while still getting to play slower games than the 4 day schedule.
Obviously, I’ll understand if it’s too late to consider such a change for this year, if everything is already set, but maybe keep it in mind for future years.
If a delegate also wants to play what are his/her options? What are the hours of the delegate’s meetings?
You are right about the dates. Instead of:
July 30-Aug 7, Aug 4-7 or 5-7, Florida
It should be:
July 30-Aug 7, Aug 2-7 or 4-7, Florida
I’ll pass this correction along to the office.
There are limits to how many different schedules can be offered. The three in place now seem to be a reasonable compromise between slow and fast. The six-day is for those who want to save a little time but still want the slow 40/2 time control. The four-day was an experiment a couple of years ago, for those who want to maximize savings and don’t care what time control they play. It worked out pretty well and, as I recall, drew about 50 players last year. I’m not sure there are enough interested players to justify another schedule between the six day and four-day.
I understand what you say about the extra vacation day but you could still save it by playing the six-day and taking a half-point bye for the first round. You could drive to Orlando Tuesday night after work and start play the following morning. That’s still eight games and, if you really wanted more, you could play one of the side events during the day on 8/6 or 8/7 (though probably at a fast time control).
I can’t leave the subject of multiple schedules without a little bit of a rant. My personal preference would be not to have ANY alternate schedules. Nine games, one per day, period. Allow ONE half point bye in rounds 1-8 only. None in round 9 - if you want a prize you have to play for it. All the different schedules and the multiple byes distort the Swiss system and have players competing under different conditions. If this resulted in a tournament of just 150-200 players, then so be it.
A nice dream but unfortunately not practical. Even before the lawsuit expenses, USCF finances were precarious enough that it just couldn’t afford to lose money on its national tournaments, year after year (which is probably what would happen if you did it my way). So, we have been forced into trying to maximize attendance, at the expense of quality and the validity of the result. If the U.S. Open had a sponsor to guarantee against loss, I would push hard for a European style format. End rant.
– Hal Terrie
The Delegates Meeting takes place 9 AM - 5 PM Saturday 8/6 (with a two-hour lunch break) and 9 AM - noon or 1 PM Sunday 8/7. However, Delegates who take their job seriously will come earlier, to attend the workshops which take place during the day, Wed. 8/3 - Fri. 8/5. This makes it difficult to play in the tournament except in the traditional schedule, unless you either take a few byes or just skip most of the workshops.
– Hal Terrie
I certainly understand that too many scheduling options might be annoying, especially for the organizers. Just thought I’d throw it out there.
As for making this (or any) American tournament into a European style “one game per day” event, with no other options, I just don’t see it EVER happening. The problem is vacation time. Here, 2 weeks of vacation time per year is standard, and anything more than that is a bonus. In Europe, most people in most countries expect to get at least 4 weeks of vacation time. I wish I could commit to spending a week vacation on a major chess tournament or two every year, but it just isn’t going to happen. This is why I like the big weekend tournaments, where I can just take Friday off work and spend 3 days playing chess all day for the whole weekend. It can get exhausting, but it’s fun.
Anyway, it looks like the first deadline to get a cheap entry fee on this one is in June, so I’ve got time to see if I can save up the vacation time. Even if I do have enough time to go to a major tourney, I’ll have to decide if I’d rather play in this or make a trip to a major tourney elsewhere that’s divided into sections. I’ve never played the US Open before, so I’m tempted, especially since it’s close enough to be an easier trip than going up to Philly for the World Open or something.
One other question: I notice that there’s no mentions of delay or increment, except in the details about the tiebreak blitz game for first place. Can we assume the normal 5 second delay?
Yes. The default for any tournament with a sudden death time control is for those using digital clocks to use the 5-second delay from move one. Any tournament not using it would have to announce that fact in all pre-tournament publicity.
– Hal Terrie
Hal has the following been updated and changed?
Groan. You had to bring this up.
I wasn’t a Delegate in 2010 but I think what happened was that they decided to postpone the decision about changing this until 2012, with the plan of revisiting the issue at the 2011 Delegates Meeting. It was a fairly controversial issue at the 2010 meeting. As I recall, they eliminated the time deduction option on Saturday but then reversed themselves on Sunday. I’m not going to go through all the arguments pro and con here. There is likely a thread somewhere on the forum where that has already been done.
– Hal Terrie
Sorry. It was just that you stated it so factually. We always try not to have the deduction. Even when we were running behind by 10 or 15 minutes a couple of weeks ago we didn’t choose to use the deduction. But there was one time a few years back when due to constraints on site we opted for it in rounds 3 and 4.
As someone who was present at the Delegate Meetings, I can attest that Hal posted a good summary of the issue.
What would be the point of deducting five minutes from the main clock time in a “six-hour” game (40/2, SD/1) in the one game per day schedule?
That this happens anyway, for reasons too deep for simple folk like me to grasp, is the main reason I support the motion to abolish the time deduction option—even though I have some sympathy for the Immitt/scholastic argument that G/25, delay-5 has been Regular-rated long enough to become Tradition.
Let’s see what happens this summer.
As argued by Mr. Goichberg, FIDE rules require no more than 12 hours a day of play, based on a 60 move game. With five second delay, you now have 12 hours 20 minutes, and thus you couldn’t do two games a day. Your perception of this rule may vary.
Alex Relyea
Right. That is the argument for deducting time from 40/2, SD/1 if there are two rounds per day. Last I heard, someone planned to lobby on behalf of USCF for FIDE to amend its allowable time control regs.
In this case I am talking about the Traditional schedule of the US Open, with but one round per day. Some players will simply set their digital clocks for what I call the CCA setting—40/115 rather than 40/2—unless it is posted and announced repeatedly not to deduct the time. Deducting the time is by far the more common approach at big events around here.
I could argue either side of whether the deduction option should be abolished…but I see no sense at all in deducting time from 40/2, SD/1 when there is only one round per day.
Exactly right, which is why there will be no time deduction from the 40/2 in the U.S. Open traditional schedule.
This whole discussion (of the time deduction) is only peripherally related to the U.S. Open. I’d appreciate it if those who want to discuss that topic at length do so in another thread.
– Hal Terrie
Very good. Here is a US Open-specific question: What is the cut-off date for norm-based titles? For example, what if a player achieves the First Category title based on an event that ended too late to make the cut-off for the relevant rating supplement?
This opens a whole new sandbox…good luck with the tournament, BTW. It looks doubtful I will play in it, but it’s good to see the advance planning and care.
Interesting question. Simplest would be to use the same cutoff for titles as for ratings, the August supplement. However, it’s up to the office to decide the policy.
Bill Goichberg
USCF Title-Based Class Prizes:
Top Life Senior Master Under 2500 $600,
top Life Master Under 2300,
Original Life Master U2300, or Life Senior Master U2300 $500,
top Candidate Master or higher title Under 2100 $500,
top First Category or higher title Under 1900 $500,
top Second Category or higher title Under 1700 $400,
top Third Category or higher title Under 1500 $400,
top Fourth Category or higher title Under 1300 $300.
Can the same player get both a Title based and rating based prize?
Players can get usually only one prize (leaving aside Best Game, etc, types of prizes.)
I assume that this does not change and also that the norm-based prizes work like the class-based prizes. That means that if a norm-based prize winner is tied with others, the norm prize is pooled with the other prizes for which the tied players are eligible and the total is divided between all the tied players – unless the norm prize is higher than this average, in which case, the norm prize winner gets the norm prize and is removed from the pool, and the remaining players divide the remainder of the pool. Is this correct?