It will be rated, but it doesn’t meet the criteria for applying toward ANTD or NTD certification.
Ken, if at least one of the four players is rated then the unrated players can readily get their ratings calculated, though with only three games played it would not be a publishable rating. One requirement for moving up to Local TD is to have an established regular rating. Nine quads at a time control of at least G/25;d5 or G/30;d0 would be enough as long as they included at least one non-win and one non-loss.
The rule that unrated players may only play in the unrated or championship sections is a common requirement imposed by organizers. Not all organizers follow that rule. The details should be included in publicity.
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FPawn, isn’t it more fair to place them where their performance ratings suggest them to be? For example, an unrated player may have played 3 games in your last tournament. Officially, he or she is unrated still, but the USCF usually shows a performance rating listed by his or her tournament entry that is found when searching a name in ratings.uschess.org. It isn’t required to put something in the TLA if you place by hand unrated players that have performance ratings or that tell you an estimate of their playing srength, is it?
Davpell, when trying to qualify as an ANTD or NTD, can you use a tournament that you ran from 10 years back in your life?
Statistically, a 3 game performance rating is a poor estimate of one’s strength so why would you want to rely on to be more fair. I have always liked using the appropriate published rating with some kind of TD Discretion to assign ratings in my tournament publicity. If I have two sections (let’s say open & u1600) then I do place no official ratings in the lower section unless some other knowledge – ( like a 1600+/3 performance).
For me I always interrogate newbies to see if they are strong. (FIDE, LiChess, Chess.com, club play, old USCF rating by name, …)
- Never just take a relatively new member ID as being correct – I have been involved with at least 3 where the player was already rated (the most recent was a player who hadn’t played in 38 years and was an expert before he stopped playing)
- Watch out for FIDE rated folks – I played in some quads were there was a 2400+ FM level player who registered as a new player and was placed in the lowest quad (yes he won quickly against 3 players)
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Ken, you can use any qualifying US Chess rated event regardless of how long ago it was. Events before 1992 would require some additional documentation since they are not in MSA. Also, old events may require verification from the chief TD in the fairly common event where they did not list all of the TDs working them, or at least did not list them in the correct positions.
What is in MSA is considered valid, barring some very very very unusual issues that have resulted in [A] sanctions against a chief TD for falsifying them after the fact or [B] sanctions against a specific TD that has made some tournaments unusable for certification purposes. Note that, unlike FIDE, in addition to not expiring the exact same tournaments can be used to satisfy different requirements. The category R event used for ANTD eligibility can be reused for NTD eligibility, The “chief assistant to an NTD at a National or category A” requirement (34c) can also be used as a “chief assistant at a $1000+ category C” requirement substitution (34b1) if it occurred at the National Open, World Open, etc. A tournament can only be used once in all of the a or b requirements for any one certification level (34a and 34b for ANTD). The exact same tournament might be used for 38h, 38f, 38d, 38b1 when testing for NTD, 34e, 34c, 34b1 when testing for ANTD, 30d, 30a2 when testing for SrTD.
Note that round robins can only count for category R tournaments (if they are large enough round robins with a high enough average rating) and for the on-line submission requirements (even if they have fewer than 6 players and/or a low average rating). They are otherwise useless for TD certification purposes. But once you’ve become a Senior TD and licensed by FIDE as an NA then round robins may be useful for FA and IA norms.
Jeff Wiewel 2025-2026 chair of TDAC (and chair or vice chair of TDAC’s predecessor TDCC going back at least 15 more years)
We ask the unrated players about their strengths when they have no performance data. Perhaps, I actually have asked each one with performance data what he thought was a guess at his rating for this tournament as well. I don’t want to place a 536 or 1109 performance data player into the Open section. However, I have found that one player was not a novice at chess because of asking him about his ability. I am not sure if he was unrated at the time. I would need to look at his record
Ken and Gary, 28D4 and 28D5 and allow directors to assign ratings if there are not ratings. 28E2 allows the assigned rating to be higher than the US Chess rating (i.e. the CCA minimum rating list or the 28E2c increase to move players up out of a section they would otherwise have been eligible for).
Jeff, we are not necessarily assigning ratings in the software, but just trying to ascertain what section to place them in.
Ken, placement is fine. If you have enough information to justify it you can also pair them with the assigned rating (requires a more focused justification than just shifting sections), which is what I did for the 2018 National Elementary, 2022 National High School and 2024&2025 All Girls National. Some of the upsides of listing the assigned ratings in the pairings is that opponents are less likely to be overconfident and pairings are made using a more appropriate strength. Some of the downsides are that opponents may make draw offer decisions based on incorrectly estimating how many rating points they would gain or lose and players’ parents may contest the rating assignment. Personally I think the upsides are more important and I’m not bothered by dealing with parents but not everybody will agree.
I am a new TD basically. My first tournament was September of 2025. I have used MUIR’s Beta system, but not the real MUIR to enter a tournament. Where does a TD select what is necessary to enter a match contest of 4 games between two rated players in the MUIR tournament software entry system? Is there a radio button or something else to select that tells MUIR the TD is submitting a match? Has the Beta for MUIR been reinstated?
Each section on MUIR has a ‘format’ setting, the options are: Swiss, Round Robin, Match and Other.
There have been no recent discussions of reactivating the beta server.
Absolutely, subject to the provisions that Jeff stated.
For example, Iet my Senior TD certification expire ~2007 while in the midst of raising 4 kids. A couple years ago I returned to chess, recertifying last year as Local TD, then Senior TD. I had to take SafeSport lessons, submit some tourneys online, and pass Local and Senior tests, but I submitted tourneys from the ‘90s that I used when I certified before as a Senior TD.