Are unrated players allowed to play matches? Meaning could 2 people just play 4 games. I read something that said unrated players can’t. I need to help a player get 4 games in, so she can play in U800 section at High School Nationals.
Thank you for the clarification! Would a double round robin tournament with 3 players be allowed with an unrated player?
I was told that unrated players are only allowed to play in unrated or championship section.
I would not expect it to, but I can’t rule it out, as US Chess has broad discretion to apply the match rules where they believe that a particular contest is really a match.
ok, you are right. sorry for the wrong info from me.
10.3.4 Note: In Spring Nationals or SuperNationals, Unrated Players may play only in a Championship or Unrated section. The exception is the K-1 Under 500/Unrated and K-3 Under 600 & Unrated sections.
4.7.2.1 A player listed as “unrated” in the Rating Supplement used for the tournament is NOT unrated if that player receives a Provisional over-the-board or online regular rating from US Chess between the time that the Rating Supplement was published and the Monday before the tournament. When this happens the player will be reassigned by the TRG to a section for which the player is eligible; the player is no longer eligible for the Unrated Section.
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I’ve been following an interesting USCF affiliate called “the Carl Schlechter Confraternity”, which runs tournaments where it seems players rated as far apart as 700 points apart are repeatedly playing each other. An example of an event is here: US Chess
Are events like this not considered matches? Are they considered league events? What is the strict definition of a match?
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To be honest, I’m not sure if the last system would have flagged that event as a match or not.
It sometimes becomes a game of cat-and-mouse, TDs keep trying to create events that should probably fall under the match limitations but don’t get flagged as a match.
I’ll pass this along to the ratings department, this may be something we need to clamp down upon further.
Thanks for letting us know, with hundreds of events rated every week we really can’t review them manually.
IMHO, the scholastic guidelines would trump the rulebook if there’s a conflict between them, and as national scholastic events cite the guidelines they should meet any advance publicity requirements.
It looks like there is confusion over the term “matches”. In the US Chess rulebook a match is a game or games against a single opponent that is not covered by normal tournament pairings (Swiss or Round Robin).
I think the initial post used matches to refer to any games. The earlier responses did not address that definition for matches (meaning games). An unrated player can play rated games against anybody if that is how the normal tournament pairings come out. Many tournaments have limits on which sections unrated players can enter, but that is to protect the rated players from players of unknown and possibly very strong strength. It is not because of rating system limitations. Some of the limits allow unrated players to play in any section but to limit the amount of prize money they can win (maybe the equivalent of no more than clear third place in the section).
The National Scholastics have rating limited sections with awards rather than monetary prizes so unrateds in them are limited to either the unrated section or the championship section that is open to anybody.
The rating system might look at a single extra game that is the only one in an extra game section, and if it doesn’t fulfill normal match restriction it may be flagged as a problem. If that is a risk then it is probably better to include it in another Swiss section as an additional entry for both players (leaving their original entries alone). A single game in a large Swiss section would not trigger match rule review (at least it did not when I ran into this exact issue with provisional players in extra games under the old system).
The first challenge is defining just exactly what a ‘match’ is, and why do we need to worry about them at all?
FWIW, here’s what was written some years ago on this issue:
For USCF purposes, a match is defined as any event in which all or substantially all of the games are between two individuals who choose to play each other or are chosen to play each other multiple times, such as a multi-game team-on-team match.
That definition would exclude any games from events that arise as a result of specific pairing situations during a tournament, such as extra games involving a house player, poor turnout in a section, etc. Since the players didn’t enter the event with the intention of playing one person multiple times, the rules regarding participation in a match should not apply. The limitations on ratings changes from match play given below may still apply.
Source: https://www.uschess.org/docs/gov/reports/2006newrulesratedmatches.php
And that takes us back to what the ratings system was designed to do. At the heart of things, it’s a probability engine. Its purpose is to predict if A plays B, what’s the likely outcome.
That then gets re-interpreted as a ‘strength’ measure, which is not exactly wrong, but not exactly right, either. (The mathematicians always get upset when I say something like that.)
Without citing a bunch of mathematical theorems (that I really don’t remember anyway), the ratings system relies on players having faced enough different opponents that the rating becomes a reliable predictor of how someone will do against some other rated player and (appropriately or not) how strong that player is.
Consider the extreme case of two players, Smith and Jones, who play chess only against each other, many games over several years. Smith wins 2/3 of those games.
Now, suppose Smith enters your tournament. What’s a reasonable rating for Smith? There isn’t one, because you don’t have enough data.
Now, suppose Smith plays in a number of fairly large tournaments and comes with a published rating of 1900.
Knowing that, what’s a good estimate for Jones, who has yet to play anyone other than Smith?
You could look up the expected performance function US Chess uses and say that a 1900 player should beat a 1789 player 66.7 percent of the time and use 1789 for Jones.
Now, here’s the trick question. (You knew one was coming.)
Would you allow Jones to play in your under 1800 section?
I wouldn’t, and here’s why. We may have dozens of data points for Smith now, but we really still only have one for Jones. 1789 might be reasonable, or it could be way off. The issue here is what’s the RELIABILITY of that 1789 estimate?
I’ve always found it interesting that we go through an elaborate mathematical process to come up with someone’s rating, but not the reliability of that number.
One final question. Given the definition of a match (towards the top of this note), does the event cited a few posts back qualify as a match or not?
(Myself, I’m still not sure.)
I’m not so sure:
2 people playing 4 games, presuimably against each other, would meet the match definition.
The word ‘match’, like the word ‘master’, has multiple meanings in chess.
Jeff, how does the validation system handle trying to claim a 4 player tournament as a Type R Round Robin tournament? It doesn’t have 6 players, so does it get rejected as a Type R tournament?
We are allowed to put unrated players in where we estimate their strengths are, aren’t we? There is one player who is unrated, but has an unofficial 2 game performance rating of 536. Can’t we put him in an Under 800 section for a money prize to the winner? And what about an unrated player with no rating of any kind, can he be placed in the Under 1100 section? What about an unrated player who speculates his max ability is to play at 1100? Can we place him in the Under 1100 section?
Micah, isn’t an unrated player considered unrated until he or she plays 4 tournament games?
TD experience requirements are checked manually, which is still a bit more complicated because we don’t have all the data available in real-time in one place yet.
A round robin is a tournament section designed for all players to player each of the other players. A quad is a four player round robin. A quad with a player missing is a three player round robin.
For ANTD and NTD certification there is a requirement for one tournament that falls in a particular subset of round robins - six players with an average rating of at least 1400 (reduced by the delegates from eight players with an average rating of at least 1800).
So, if a club TD turns in a 4 player RR it should be accepted even though it isn’t 6 players? Does it still need to have the average of a 1400 rating minimum?