Yesterday at TACO LXXIX in Raleigh, NC we had a gentleman named David Thaxton who entered the tournament with a 1441 rating and defeated a master, two experts, and two top half A players to win the tournament. The combined upset was 2,353 points. I was wondering if the USCF kept records for largest cumulative upset in tournament by number of rounds. If so, how close was this to the record for a four rounder?
Interesting things can happen when a scholastic player becomes active again after nine years without playing in a rated tournament.
The USCF does not maintain cumulative upset records, because for the most part all it would indicate is someone whose rating was out-of-date and inaccurate.
The 252 point rating increase he had from that event would be tied for 9th among the largest single event ratings gains by players with a pre-event established rating of 1400 or higher since 2005. though three of the ones above it appear to be the result of money prize floors. Most if not all of them are players who had an established rating but went inactive for several years, during which time their strength increased dramatically.
We also see this with foreign FIDE rated players, but we do have a mechanism for adjusting someone’s USCF rating based on a more current FIDE rating. We have seen several foreign players who had a USCF rating from when they were kids who returned to USCF rated play as IMs or GMs, with a current FIDE rating 500 points or more above their now grossly out-of-date USCF ratings.