I think I’ve figured it out! He has a FIDE standard rating but no Blitz rating. People are started in the Blitz system with their standard rating. However, maybe you still have to get at least 1 point in a Blitz event to get your first Blitz rating. Since he went 0-4 against the two FIDE rated players he played, he remains unrated in the Blitz system and my two games against him don’t count for rating.
Are there any repercussions from FIDE for forging color information?
FIDE can suspend or revoke your arbiter status. It seems to me like they are more likely to sanction officials for fraudulent reports than the USCF is.
But several issues are similar. How can someone verify that the report is incorrect, and who has standing to file the report?
With a 40-50 player Double Round swiss that lasts 6-7 rounds, and pairing sheets that do not track color information, I wonder what is a reasonable solution to the problem. With 50 players playing double round over 7 rounds, there would be 350 games to track as to what color was played. Short of developing obsessive-compulsive disorder and spending an additional 20 minutes between rounds asking every player what color they had played and matching that to the results (How many players are ever going to sit through this process a second time?), you would have a 5 hour blitz tournament.
Swiss Sys converts the 7 round double into a 14 round single and then assigns results. Two draws by both sides are reported as two wins. Wins by both sides could be reported with opposite colors because the of way Swiss Sys breaks out the results.
Until Swiss Sys and WinTD develop a pairing sheet that allows for the simple recording of color results, with two games being reported each round, this task is either mind-boggling or mind-breaking. FIDE can just report inaccurate color patterns if this is at all important in Blitz. The only importance is the pretty feature on the FIDE website and THAT isn’t important to blitz at all.
Mike
Well,
- To begin with, the pairing programs would have to print pairing sheets with four result boxes, instead of two, for each pairing.
- Second, it would have to be understood (by the players) that the player listed in the left column should play white in the first game, black in the second.
- Third, it would have to be understood that the leftmost box (within each pair) is for the first game, and the rightmost for the second.
- Fourth, the pairing software must allow game-by-game data entry – instead of L, D, W, @, and $ (or whatever symbols Swis-Sys uses) for 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2, it would have to allow WW, WD, WL, DW, DD, DL, LW, LD, LL – not to mention WX and LF in case only one game was played and then the loser forfeited the second game in disgust.
- Fifth, the results would have to be reported this way to the USCF software.
- Sixth, the USCF software must be able to accept this format.
- Seventh, the USCF software should be able to print color information like this in its MSA crosstables.
That’s about it, in a (huge) nutshell.
Bill Smythe
I ran a 5-player 5-rd Dbl RR blitz today:
- Swiss Sys doesn’t print the pairing sheets like this yet
- Players did understand that the player assigned white played white in the 1st game and reported it that way
- Scores were things like 1- 1/2 on left and 0 - 1/2 on right, instead of 1.5 - .5
- Sys Sys allows me, once I convert it to a 10 round event, to manually edit the crosstable to ensure colors are correct
- Doesn’t matter how I submit it to USCF for rating, USCF doesn’t care about colors, only FIDE does. I will send separate crosstables to Walter for each event which are correct for colors played
- USCF software accepts results and not colors, unfortunately. Once it accepts colors, #7 will be possible
I am running one Friday night which could be up to a 28 player 5 round dbl swiss. Not sure I will do the above for 28 players
Mike
I was under the impression that USCF software already accepted (but did not require) color information. I certainly have seen some crosstables on MSA with it.
Alex Relyea
Yes, but how do you know what those colors were in the first place?
Not true. WinTD already reports colors, and they are listed on the MSA crosstables, in the lower left corner of each round-by-round result box.
Bill Smythe
I look at the correctly recorded results on the pairing sheet:
Res White Res Black
1/2 - 1 Player A 1/2 - 0 etc
and transcribe it onto the swiss sys crosstable, which shows White and Black colors. Reporting this to the USCF software is the issue.
I played in the National Open Blitz last week, which was administered by WinTD and it shows all 14 rounds only by results in MSA and definitely doesn’t show color (event… 201306094232 )
Please point me to a double round blitz done by WinTD in MSA that shows colors online. I am from Kansas today, I’ll believe it when I see it.
WinTD already does this.
You can also enter colors when inputting events online, or edit them into an event you are working on that was uploaded without color information.
As noted upthread, recent versions of WinTD can generate upload files with color information. SwisSys does not have this capability yet, but I know Thad Suits is working on adding it.
Reading this thread I feel like Allen Iverson: BLITZ? BLITZ? You’re doing all this for Blitz ratings?
Having seen one of Jeff’s events with colors listed in MSA, my trip to Kansas was informative. Now we have to get Thad to implement that feature.
Mike
Imagine the dialogue if Jim Mora and “The Answer” had a conversation about the rating system.
He’s working on it. But then we have to get TDs to upgrade their pairing program. (I know of at least one TD still using a version of SwisSys from around 1998.)
And what if the forging came from Walter Browne? In the event I brought up, somebody most likely forged the color information as it is not correct and we played each opponent twice and simply reported the results like 1-1 so it is impossible to know who was White and Black in each game unless all the players were contacted and asked if they remembered what color they were in each game and I definitely wasn’t contacted.
Also, I’ll ask this question again: To get your first FIDE rating, do you have to play 3 different FIDE rated players or simply 3 games against FIDE rated players and they can be the same person?
Are you trying to get Walter in trouble? Walter Browne is the GM and former U.S. champion, by the way. Walter Brown is the NTD.
More likely it’s the pairing program that “forged” the color/result information. SwissSys does this, for example. The chief TD is responsible for making sure that the information reported to USCF is accurate. For USCF ratings it doesn’t matter whether a 1-1 result was two draws or a win for each player, and it doesn’t matter what order the games were played or which player was white or black in each game. For FIDE the result with each color does matter so the TD needs to be more careful about this. I’ll have to keep that in mind if I ever direct a FIDE-rated blitz tournament, which I haven’t done so far.
If you’re talking about FIDE blitz ratings I don’t know the answer because I can’t find the regulations governing blitz ratings on fide.com. For regular FIDE ratings you have to play 9 games against FIDE-rated opponents, although some games against unrated opponents can count if they’re in a round robin, and matches in which one or both players are unrated aren’t rated. The regulations for regular FIDE ratings starting July 1st are posted here.
IF he is the one that forged the color information, then yes. Just because he is a GM and former US Champion doesn’t excuse him of anything.
I know you have to play 9 games against FIDE rated opponents to get your first published rating but you also have to play 3 FIDE rated players in your first FIDE event otherwise those games don’t count towards the 9 games needed to get a published rating.
I doubt very much that Walter Browne forged the color information. 
The games can’t be in a match, so they can’t all be against the same opponent. They have to be in a tournament registered with FIDE at least a week in advance, and you have to score at least one point.
But what about a swiss event where you play each opponent twice? In the Blitz event I mentioned previosuly, I played two FIDE rated players twice and scored 1 point. Does this count in getting my first FIDE rating since I played 4 games against FIDE rated players or does it not since I only played 2 FIDE rated players?