This amuses me. For those of you who don’t know, dozens of members who are interested in governance from all over the country manage to make it to the U.S. Open every year, yet Mr. Smith, who apparently wants to have his finger in all of the pies that USCF bakes, can’t be bothered unless it is in his home town. By the way, I was in Vancouver, and I don’t remember meeting Mr. Smith at any of the workshops.
Alex Relyea
Maybe Micah will have better luck than I did. I was at the last 3 or 4 Ratings Workshops and asked questions which I attributed to this forum. The session chair (Ken Sloan?) doesn’t appear to have a high regard for this forum and didn’t provide any answers. He sort of ignored the questions and went on with the agenda (there isn’t usually time for meaningful Q&A left in Ratings Workshop hour). Sometimes though, my questions generated discussions within the workshop audience, which, I think, annoyed the chair.
I will be there in Orlando, but probably won’t go to the Ratings Workshop this time - waste of time as far as I am concerned. I mean, I wouldn’t even call it a workshop, more like a presentation by the session chair. The Rules Workshop is a lot better in that regard. It does really feel like a workshop. Kudos to David Kuhns.
Michael Langer
Austin, TX
It’s not that I can’t be bothered. A lot of players who are interested in chess from all over the country can’t make it to play in the US Open either. I wasn’t as interested in USCF governance back during the 2012 US Open in Vancouver.
Note that Mr. Smith cleverly sidesteps the assertion here. I said nothing about playing in the U.S. Open and nothing about players who are interested in chess.
Alex Relyea
I wasn’t sidestepping the assertion here. I was bringing up a comparable assertion. If you must know Alex, I can’t afford it, geez. I already used a lot of money to play in the Washington Open.
Give it a rest, Alex. Micah did say he wasn’t as interested in governance in 2012, so your assertion aside he DID respond to your attack. The topic of this thread is not being advanced by picking on Micah.
Someone asked me recently about running a round robin blitz with a small number of players (6) and having each player play the others 4 games. The format would be similar to the 1948 World Championship tournament. For such a tournament format, would it be possible to send it all at once as one section or break it up into two separate sections, with 10 games per player in each section for the purpose of rating?
It would be possible to send it in as one section as the USCF system can handle up to 32 rounds.
Alex Relyea
Thanks, Alex. That means a tournament format with both 6 and 8 players playing 4 rounds against each of the others will be a possibility for us to run. Now to figure out how much time it will take to run one of these and fit it into the playing site time restrictions. I estimate around 7 hours or less.
You will need to use some tricks to submit a quad round robin event as a single section with either WinTD or SwisSys.
One way to do it as a single section would be to have players 1-6 play a round robin against each other (use Crenshaw-Berger tables), have players 7-12 be the same set of players for the second round, players 13-18 be round 3 and 19-24 be round 4.
You won’t be able to generate final standings or tie breaks that way, but the the ratings programming aggregates the games from all pairing #'s with the same USCF ID when rating the section.
Note that when done this way, the number of rounds is 6, not 24. You could in theory accomodate a 32 player quad round robin using this approach.
Also, keep in mind that under current ratings system rules, any time two players meet more than twice in a section, they cannot receive bonus points.
You might have to reverse the order in two of the four quarters in order to make the colors come out right.
For example, in the second quarter, player 1 would become 12, player 2 would become 11, etc. Ditto for the fourth quarter.
Bill Smythe
Why not just reverse the order of the Crenshaw-Berger table, if it has 1-2 then in the second set that becomes 8-7 instead of 7-8?
With WinTD, you can do 4 games per “round”. It doesn’t care that they’re not played back to back like a double blitz.
I guess I was assuming that it would be done directly through TD/Affiliate, entering results by hand. That’s how I do all my round robins.
Alex Relyea
If you do that, I suspect the event will get flagged for looking like a match and won’t pass validation. Then you can “call the office,” as we hear here. Unless I am missing something.
Why would it look like a match?
Alex Relyea
You still have each player playing 20 games (5 “rounds”). How many games can WinTD handle. I thought it was only 12.
That said, Nolan’s suggestion of multiple instances of the players coupled with multiple games per round would allow two instances of each player and two games per round giving twenty games per player and only ten rounds (five double rounds) in the event.
To reduce confusion during the event you could actually have multiple sections (one for the first double round of pairings and one for the second) and then merge them after everything is done.
“Rounds” and “Games” are two different animals. Rounds are limited to 12, but if you play four per round (however you define that), then you can do up to 12 rounds with four games each. On the tournament submission it will separate those into individual games, the way it does currently with double blitz.
Players play the same opponent four times each—if I understand the issue correctly, of which I am not sure. I know from experience that even two games between the same opponents will trigger a caution. At three games it won’t pass validation and you have to “call the office.” Splitting into two or more sections is precisely what those who shudder at the thought of rated matches try to sniff out.
I will say that after jumping through hoops to bypass the “smells like a match” issue in the validation program to get legit club events rated, I would not be happy to hear that creative splitting of sections will be accepted as SOP, just because it is Blitz. Or would this apply to Quick and Regular, too?
I haven’t tried it, but I suspect 6 players, each facing the same 5 opponents 4 times would trigger ‘no bonus points’ messages but would not trigger the ‘this looks likes a match’ code, since each player has five different opponents, playing each one four times.