Why?
Alex Relyea
Why not?
Perhaps FIDE considers anything with mm+ss less than 120 to be inadequate for serious master-level chess. I tend to agree. My personal lower threshold is G/90 d5, and for really important games against tough opposition, I would want more time than that. Why should GMs settle for less?
Once upon a time, the standard TC for top level chess was 40/150, followed by adjournment and then repeating secondary controls. G/120 or G/90 inc 30 (the current minimums) are already much faster than that. You have to set a limit somewhere if you want to retain quality of play.
If “Why not?” is the best reason you have for your proposal, you’ll never convince FIDE. I guess I just assumed there was a rationale for your proposal. I apologize and will go back into my hole.
Alex Relyea
GM’s and others who don’t want to play in a tournament with a time control that has a “total playing time” of 90 don’t have to.
All you said was “Why?” so you don’t seem to have any rationale against it.
Anyway, in this FIDE news release, fide.com/news/1438, it says “3-hour games (90+90) will be accepted provided that both players are rated below 2400, an increase from 2200. Hopefully, it will help the organisers of tournaments with shorter time controls to submit their events for FIDE rating.” It’s still often going to be difficult to FIDE rate G/90 events given how it will often be unknown beforehand if all the players in a section will have a FIDE rating under 2400.
You have yet to give a reason why it’s necessary to FIDE-rate G/90 events at all. If you want your event to be FIDE-rated, all you have to do is conform to FIDE rules. Mike Nolan has suggested a way to do that. Instead, you want FIDE to change their rules. Aside from the fact that FIDE probably doesn’t read this forum, they have no compelling reason to change their rules – they’re certainly not going to do so just because you wish they would. Why not focus on what you can control instead of playing the “Wouldn’t it be nice if … ?” game?
If I changed the time control in the event I recently ran in future years from G/90;d10 to something that has a total playing time of at least 120, the number of rounds would need to be reduced from 5 to 4 without it being too grueling on the first day since there are three rounds on the first day. I don’t think 4 rounds would be as popular, especially since the tournament gets a lot of out-of-town players. I for one would be much less likely to travel to a tournament in another area if it was only 4 rounds instead of 5.
I think 90 is long enough to where it fits in the FIDE standard rating system (we go down to 30 in the US Chess regular rating system!) and it will help more events to be FIDE rated.
As it said in the FIDE statement I linked: “Hopefully, it will help the organisers of tournaments with shorter time controls to submit their events for FIDE rating.” However, it’s still often going to be difficult to submit G/90 tournaments for FIDE rating since it often won’t be known beforehand if any 2400+ players are going to play which is why they should just make G/90 ratable regardless of rating.
Micah, your reasoning may well be impeccable, but FIDE isn’t going to change it, so you still only seem to have two choices. You can comply with FIDE requirements or you can hold it as you wish and not FIDE rate it.
There is a third option that “might” be available but which would first require getting our federation’s FIDE Events committee to check on: whether or not non-ratable games can be excised from the report with the rest still rated. Rushing ahead and doing that without knowing whether or not it can be done would be similar to jumping off a cliff into the ocean without knowing whether the water below was a 60-foot deep pool or 3 feet deep with jagged rocks on the bottom.
My best guess is that it is not an option, but that is only a guess - not a guarantee.
Well, they just changed the rating restriction from 2200 to 2400 to be able to rate G/90 so I could see them making more changes in the future.
I’ve actually emailed FIDE about that. I’ll let you know if I get any response.
I just got a reply from FIDE QC secretary Alex Holowczak on this! Here is what I asked and here was his response:
Good. That seems to be a reasonable interpretation of the wording in the FIDE rating regulations.
that might even help draw some more higher-rated players if they don’t have to worry about losing FIDE points.
…scot…
Not the response I anticipated, but it works.
The nonchalance is what seems really unanticipated. Maybe I have not found the correct search phrase, but I haven’t found anything that seems to indicate that, “yes, rating games for just some of the players is OK” is the correct interpretation. That almost seems like it would be a FAQ.
That does raise the question of whether there’s a list of acceptable reasons why a game can be excluded from a FIDE rated event.
Absent such a list, it seems to open the door for mischief.
It does say that if the section is advertised as FIDE rated, it must be FIDE rated. But the closest I can see at the game level is
“will” is rather an odd choice of wording.
As the dedicated FIDE Ratings Officer for US Chess (note there is a separate Ratings Officer that deals with the US Chess rating of events), I can advise you that has been done within the USA previously, with appropriate notice given to all players in all advertising, and providing such information when submitting the event for FIDE registration. The players who are rated 2400+ will have their games removed, for both players, before it is submitted to FIDE for rating.
Please note it is advisable to contact me at fide@uschess.org rather than posting such questions to the forums.