28H and 28I deal with how to handle players who are ineligible for the section due to rating, but what about for other reasons? What if it is unknown to either the player or the TD until after the tournament? For example, let’s say there is a U11 section in October, but ages are based as of 31 December. Thus a player born 11 November 2006 is ineligible for the section. The player knows he’s ten years old, so registers, and there is a big enough rush at registration that no one checks his birthday. The next day (after submitting the rating report) the TD is told by another parent of the problem. What should the TD do now?
I’d be inclined to treat it the same way as above, but I’m curious as to other opinions.
Perhaps your example is wrong. Someone born on 11/11/2006 would not turn 11 until 11/11/2017.
If there was an ineligible player, then the next person in line should get whatever award was advertised. There is a second problem in that the older player’s opponents played someone who shouldn’t have been in the section and their scores were effected by it. I would use the same rules 28H and 28I to make corrections.
Personally I wouldn’t advertise a tournament based on a future birthday. I would instead say “open to players born after mm/dd/yyyy.” This way should be less confusing to entrants.
If I was doing this I would have the cut-off date for ages be the starting date of the tournament. If you prefer to make it a different date, then Mr. Stenzel’s suggestion of saying “must be born after mm/dd/yyyy” seems to be the way that will lead to the least confusion.
Scholastic Nationals rules have an age limit based on “ages are as of September 1 of the school year in which the tournament takes place”. That way the cutoff is always in the past. With a cutoff in the past there may be the headache of some that do not enter because they erroneously think they are too old, but that is better than splitting migraine of not catching people who erroneously thought they were young enough.
Perhaps I used a bad hypothetical. Assume there is a player who, after the tournament, is discovered to have been ineligible for reasons other than rating. How should this be handled?
I would adjust the scores of the opponents of the expelled player as per 28I2, and adjust the rating report as per 28I3. As for what to do about the expelled player, that depends on why this player was eventually ruled ineligible. Was the fact that the player was allowed to enter a section for which he/she was not eligible primarily the fault of the player, or of the TD or organizer? Was this something that could have, maybe should have been discovered during registration, or at least during the tournament? Was there subterfuge on the part of the player to gain entry to a section for which he/she was not eligible? You need to answer these questions before deciding if or how far to proceed against the expelled player.
Thank you. This is exactly where I wanted to go with this. Hypothetically no one knows until two days after the tournament, and no one should have known, except for someone not connected to the tournament in any way.
If no one connected to the tournament should have known about this until two days after the tournament, then it is not the fault of the TD or organizer, but solely of the player. Now you need to determine if you think this was an innocent mistake, or a deliberate attempt to gain entrance to a section for which this player was not eligible. If the former, I would do nothing beyond explaining to the expelled player what his error was. If the latter I would file a complaint with the Ethics Committee.
I’m not clear on what you mean by “expelled player”. How do you expel a player 2 days after the tournament (let’s assume that prizes have been awarded and the tournament has been rated)?
Part of the problem is that the USCF website doesn’t provide a way for a TD to check on a player’s birthdate, or even their class of USCF membership (Scholastic, Youth, Young Adult, Adult).
I’d anticipate privacy and/or legal issues if the US Chess website did provide that information. For that matter there used to be a (very) cumbersome brute force method using the TD/Affiliate functions that would allow (eventually) determining that information. Privacy issues brought about the elimination of that method.
Remember that becoming a Club TD is possible for any non-TD member and almost anybody can become a member.
The ability of the TD to avoid these issues rests quite often with proper data provided to the organizer/registrar. And when the organizer/registrar is an official with the school hosting the scholastic,
even more critical. Had a kid who did not place in a Kindergarten - First grade section, who days after the
event, I found out was a second grader.
Is it really incorrect to allow the standings and the report to USCF to stand as they are as the final standings
are not affected??
Further, what real obligation does the organizer have to “go back” and “deal with” the results from the ineligible player?? That is, should the second graders wins be voided in the actual tournament standings,
full point byes going to his opponents that he defeated, or drew, as this could very well affect final standings?
I guess the question is then, when is the tournament really officially over??
Very interested in you all’s (as we say in Texas) thoughts??
If the MSA results wouldn’t be materially affected (i.e… the ineligible player wasn’t high in the standings and the opponents who gained from adjusting results similarly aren’t high in the standings), I would probably not go to the trouble of moving the games into an Extra Rated Games section. BTW, does anyone know whether 28I3 is supposed to include all the ineligible player’s games (which would mean that he doesn’t show in the main MSA listing at all) or just the ones with adjusted results (i.e. played losses would stay in the main section)?
Rule 28I3 seems clearly worded: “The actual results of each opponent vs. the expelled player shall be transferred to an “extra rated games” chart for USCF rating purposes (28M4).” (emphasis mine) There is no indication that “each opponent” refers only to the opponents who did not win the game against the expelled player. Of course, there is no adjustment to the score of any opponent who defeated the expelled player.
I’m going to redirect the OP to discuss the difficulty in finding out about eligibility during a tournament.
I had a case a little while ago about a player being considered ineligible for a K-5 section and who should have been in a K-6 section. The complainant had second-hand evidence of the player making a statement and MSA evidence of the player having played in junior high tournaments.
Further investigation showed that the player had played in a K-1 national three years earlier and a K-3 national two years earlier and had a history of playing up (as far as grade level goes) in many other tournaments.
There have been other cases of players being removed from a section due to ineligibility based on having played in a state single-grade-level tournament for a grade higher than what was allowed in the section. For that reason, even though we always get requests to allow it we are very firm in IL about not allowing players to play up in our state school grade tournament. I don’t know how firm other states but even if a state allows playing up I would suggest playing only in your current grade at a state school grade event. Note that the elementary, junior high and high school nationals are all K-x where x is the maximum grade level for the section, BUT the national school grade has sections only for a single grade (pre-schoolers can play in the kindergarten level for multiple years and still play in it one more time while they are in kindergarten).
If an organizer has unusual requirements, like ‘age as of 12/31’ rather than ‘age as of today’, it is incumbent upon the organizer to take the steps needed to ensure that entrants meet those requirements. That mean collecting additional information from players or having extra staff at the registration desk.
You can’t always depend upon information in MSA to check entry requirements are met.
Since the late 1990’s I’ve argued that an implicit concept to US Chess rules should be stated explicitly within the rules - that is - that every entrant in a tournament has a responsibility to be able to affirmatively demonstrate at the tournament that they are eligible for the prize(s) for which they are competing, or risk being removed from that section/tournament.
This came to my attention because it became clear in some national scholastic events that there were “schools” competing for team prizes that could not, in fact, show that they were a school, and not a club or some type of school that at that time was not allowed (a virtual school or a home school.) When challenged, the ruling was that it wasn’t shown that they WEREN’T a school – even though in general to compete for a prize in US Chess one has to be able to show affirmative eligibility. (Something showing that one is the correct age, correct rating range, etc.)