I am going to start running a 3+2 Blitz tournament after the Quad tournament I am currently running each month. I have several questions.
Is 3+2 Blitz generally faster, slower, or about the same as 5 0 Blitz?
The current standards for Blitz (which is different from what is stated in the 5th edition of the rulebook) is touch move, illegal move loses, and no insufficient losing chances, correct?
What rating(s) should be used for pairings and prizes? Just Blitz ratings (which could be unfair for a player with a stale Blitz rating to win an under prize) or the higher of a players Blitz and Regular rating (which could be unfair for players who are worse in Blitz and have a lower Blitz rating to not be eligible for under prizes due to their higher regular rating being used)?
In the rating system document (glicko.net/ratings/rating.system.pdf) it says “If the event is a Blitz event and the player has no regular established rating, FIDE rating or CFC rating, but has a provisional regular rating, then set the initial Blitz rating to the provisional regular rating based on the smaller of 10 and the number of games on which the regular provisional rating is based.” Are players put into the with a provisional regular rating based on 3 or less games? I ask this because players are only put into the Quick system with a regular rating that is based on 4 or more games.
I think most players would say G/3 inc/2 has, if anything, a slightly slower “feel” than G/5 d0.
Touch move, yes (fortunately). Illegal move loses, yes (unfortunately). (You could always post a variation.) Insufficient losing chances would make no sense if you have inc/2 (or even d2). With d0 – well, heaven help us all if organizers continue to run blitz tournaments that way.
I refuse to have an opinion about your third point, and I lack sufficient knowledge (or desire to know) about your fourth.
I haven’t looked at the white paper to see if this is covered somewhere else, but I don’t think we use other ratings based on less than 4 games anywhere, so it should probably say ‘provisional rating based on at least 4 games’. I’ve emailed Mark Glickman to confirm this.
CCA and MACA tournaments use regular or blitz, whichever is higher. I’m not sure whether other organizers are using just blitz ratings, or regular if the player has no blitz rating.
The statement in the white paper about money floors that says “If a player wins over $2,000 in an under-2000 context” should be revised to say “$2000 or more” and updated since its not longer just in an “under 2000 context”. I’ve recently noticed players getting 2000 money floors from U2100 sections.
Another initial seeding question that would be good to clarify in the white paper is if a players initial USCF rating is seeded from a CFC rating if the CFC rating is provisional.
Since CFC does not, as far as I know, issue time-dated ratings lists that could be readily loaded into a database, nor does the USCF maintain a CFC-to-USCF ID cross-index, any attempts to initialize USCF ratings from CFC ratings requires someone to look up players manually, decide whether some player on the CFC list is the same player as in a USCF-rated event, and then decide if the CFC rating is appropriate to use. Provisional ratings (assuming CFC even releases that information reliably) just adds another level of complexity.
As I recall, the RC’s latest CFC-to-USCF conversion suggests USCF ratings aren’t highly convergent with USCF ratings, so it is questionable how useful they are. (An inaccurate rating conversion might actually be worse than no information at all.)
Moreover, if the player’s CFC rating is under 1501, we treat it as if it is based on 0 games, only ratings above 1500 become USCF ratings based on 5 games. How many CFC-rated players that are likely to play in USCF-rated events have a CFC rating over 1500 but based on less than 5 games?
For players with no blitz rating, it may make sense to use the higher of a player’s regular or quick rating, if applicable.
When I take entries for side events at CCA tournaments, I do lookups on MSA, so it’s efficient to do this. If I were to take entries directly into the pairing program (which is what I often do for smaller or local events), this would be more time-consuming, since I would only have the regular/blitz rating DB loaded.
Generally, I would concur with Mr. Smythe, especially for those games that go past 30-40 moves.
My experience with running and playing G/3+2i has been overseas. Based on that, I would say most of the round is done faster than at G/5, but the longer games may well run more than 10 minutes, because players use their accrued time to think a little more in the late middlegame or endgame.
I know Michael Atkins runs G/3+2i events on a regular basis (I keep trying to get over to Maryland to play in one; I will someday). His opinion would be useful, IMHO.
Two other things to update in the white paper would be:
The section on updating USCF ratings from foreign FIDE events. Isn’t it only for players rated 2200+ FIDE now unless lower players opt into the FIDE adjustment process? And what about players who were once 2200+ FIDE but are now below 2200?
This statement should be updated to add in the Blitz rating system. “The rating calculations apply separately to the QC and regular chess rating systems. Other than the use of imputing initial ratings for unrated players, there is no formal connection between these two systems.”
What is written in the white paper doesn’t “accurately describes either the written rule or the (apparent) current procedure”. Maybe the written rule should be the same as what the current procedure actually is. How does my rewording not accurately describe the current procedure?
Not that many. But what I was saying was it would be good to clarify in the White paper whether a provisional CFC rating based on say 15 games is used to initialize the players USCF rating.
“For the Blitz system, if the player has an established regular rating based on at least 4 games, the initial Blitz rating is set equal to the regular rating based on the lesser of 10 and the number of games on which the regular rating is based (N = 10 or N = prior number of games).”
An established rating based on at least 4 games?
It should have been updated here:
“If the event is a Blitz event and the player has no regular established rating, FIDE rating or CFC rating, but has a provisional regular rating, then set the initial Blitz rating to the provisional regular rating based on the smaller of 10 and the number of games on which the regular provisional rating is based.”
I recommend you send your suggested wording to mg@math.bu.edu.
I’ve asked the Walter, the ED and the USCF President to clarify what current rules and procedure are on money prize floors. Whether that means the written policy should be revised or the procedure revised is not my area of responsibility.
Its nice feeling useful As a player, the time control seems slower and I actually like it better now than that earlier version of me who submitted the ADM to make 5-0 the standard blitz time. As a director it might be a little slower but I’ve watched amazing things happen, like a player down to 1 second for multiple moves (yes, 3 seconds after the move) and then reeling off 20-30 amazing fast moves and having 45 seconds on the clock. The chance to do that increases the round times for the director and increases the pleasure for the player so it seems slower on both accounts and better. Don’t see as many clock punching animals at the ending either for whatever reason.
This answer is a pretty good start so I will give my opinion of questions 3 and 4. For 3, award prizes based on blitz ratings in blitz tournaments. Do not award based on provisional blitz ratings but established blitz ratings. Performing this action will increase the likelyhood that players will obtain established blitz ratings.
As for question 4, simply enter the players into the tournament and let the great computers at the USCF do the heavy lifting. If the players are USCF members the computer will sort out where they stand. Now if this question is really asking something else, I am going to use my early in the morning excuse for providing this response.
This is the same issue you raised in another thread. With less than 4 games the player does not have a provisional rating, but rather is unrated. So either system is only seeded if the player has a provisional rating, and 3 games is not a provisional rating.
My Blitz tournaments are likely going to be 10 round double swiss. If is gets poor turnout and players have to play more than twice to get in the 10 rounds, is it OK to submit the games where players played a 3rd time as an “extra games” section so players are eligible for bonus points or is that bending the rules too much?
I would say ‘no’, they aren’t ‘extra games’, they’re legitimately part of that section, unlike games that are arranged against a house player when there is a no-show, cross-section pairing games or games against a player who is subsequently moved to another section due to eligibility issues. (These are the three most common reasons for ‘extra games’ sections.)
Someone who wants to view the crosstable and see who won would be misinformed by your crosstable. Computing tiebreaks would be messy, too.
According to Mark Glickman the predictive power of multiple games against the same opponent is equal to the square root of the number of games. So two or three games against the same opponent are worth 1.414 and 1.732 games, respectively. It might be possible to adjust the ratings formula to handle multiple games against the same opponent using their predictive power. IMHO that would be a fairly significant change in the formula (and not an easy one to program, I suspect), but one that Blitz chess may make worth the effort, since there are so many Blitz events where people have the same opponent more than once. How or if this would impact the existing match rules is unclear.
Would this only be if you play the same opponent more than once in a single event or would it span multiple events? If the ratings formula was changed “to handle multiple games against the same opponent using their predictive power”, would players then be eligible for bonus points from an event if they played an opponent more than twice? This could prevent situations like the following: After 9 rounds of a Blitz event, a players rating would go up 50 points. In the last round they win but because they have now played one opponent three times, they lose their bonus points and only go up 40 points from the event, essentially losing 10 rating points from a win.
There are no current plans I know of to combine games across sections for ratings purposes. The idea was looked at (in a different context) and rejected as both too complicated and requiring too many (and rather radical) changes in USCF’s conceptual model for ratings.
Come to the Ratings Workshop in Orlando and you can ask questions directly of the session chair.
As a player, the time control seems slower and I actually like it better now than that earlier version of me who submitted the ADM to make 5-0 the standard blitz time. As a director it might be a little slower but I’ve watched amazing things happen, like a player down to 1 second for multiple moves (yes, 3 seconds after the move) and then reeling off 20-30 amazing fast moves and having 45 seconds on the clock. The chance to do that increases the round times for the director and increases the pleasure for the player so it seems slower on both accounts and better. Don’t see as many clock punching animals at the ending either for whatever reason.