New Rating System Status Update

Running Chess Tournaments
41

As I understand the process by which events received in the mail are handled, paper reports do receive equal attention.

However, equal attention does not mean equal speed. It takes more time to key in paper reports than to upload a diskette file, covering the extra staff time is one reason for the additional charge for paper reports.

I’m puzzled by your comment about not being able to upload a file. Dozens of other TDs seem to have mastered that step.

However, that’s NOT the end of the TD’s job for reports submitted online, and that’s a deliberate design decision on the USCF’s part.

But if you want your tournaments rated within hours instead of days or weeks, isn’t spending a few minutes resolving any problems with the rating report, many of which are things you SHOULD have cleared up at registration (like memberships), worth that additional time?

However, if you want to continue to ‘sign it and forget it’, you will have that option, which means:

  1. It will take significantly more time for your events to be rated, because someone else will have to fix all your problems.

  2. It will cost significantly more for your events to be rated.

42

Steve,

Just because you pay a premium to submit a paper report doesn’t guarantee you equal service. The USCF is trying to nudge everyone over to online reports which I’m sure involves a combination of higher fees and slower services.

The online report submission is working great. I submitted a tournament from 2/8 on 2/13 and it was rated on 2/14. No paper submission can ever match that - since a paper submission would still be going through the mail.

Automating processes is key to the future survival of the USCF, and everyone needs to be a partner in assisting with this.

43

Steve Dillard:

Even if the director use the online service, would be able to upload the information of a class D tournament within 15 minutes. The online service even will check the tournament before you submit, making sure there are zero warnings and errors. If there is a warning or error, will get a email within minutes. Making the director correct a minor problem that can take weeks to fix with paper.

The tournament formats can be treated equally with each other. I can send in new memberships on a Saturday morning at registeration. Inform the new member of their ID number, and print out a tempory membership card. They will have their update on the MSA within a number of hours, and up before the end of the tournament. Send in the online tournament results right after the tournament, and the tournament is received for rating before the players get home. When the rating program is online at 100%, they could see the results of their rating when they have breakfeast the next day.

If I send that tournament out with the post, the post office will not be open till Monday. If its’ done online, the new memberships and the tournament will be rated when nobody is in the office working, as it was done on a Saturday.

44

My question is concerning young kids. The ratings of kids that are taking lessons and really studying increases at a rapid rate. I’ve seen kids ratings increase 300pts and then a tournament is rated 3,4,5months late and the childs ratings take a dump because the TD tourned it in late and they had a bad tournament at the lower rating now affecting their higher rating. It seems that the re-rating will take care of the 1 or 2 month out of order problem, but what about longer time periods. How about just rejecting the tournament if it is outside the re-rating time limit. Do that to an organizer and see if the parents don’t get mad. They will get him/her to turn those in on time or nobody will go to their tournament.

45

Same thing happened in the CT State Scholastic in 2004 with me! Check out my msa data!!! :frowning: :frowning:

46

I agree with Gonzales. It’s hard for developing young players to not get re-rated for six months. We have a group of kids on our team now who have played three or four tourneys since November and have not had a ratings change since last season (That would be March 04). For the tourney they played in November, their section never got rated by USCF. Their January and February games are stuck in the backlog.

I know it will all catch up eventually, and be done in the right order. But in the tournaments they’re playing now, the seedings and pairings are based on ancient data.

Can anyone enlighten me on what the impact will be of having a couple of hundred scholastic players go to a state tourney with some of the players having up-to-date ratings and others having not been re-rated since last year’s state tourney? What are the impacts? Or does it all come out the same whether or not they have up-to-date ratings? If so, then why bother with seeding the kids before the tourney? Why not just pair them randomly for the first round and let it all shake itself out over the course of seven games?

47

I ran a tournament this past weekend in which one of the sections was a six game GM match. I’m now trying to upload it online, and am getting an error in this section because it “looks like a match”. Perhaps this is part of the reason why two sections of one of my December tournaments haven’t been rated yet? What do I need to do, once I get the rest of the errors fixed?

Alex Relyea

48

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t the tournament submission sheets say the tournamanet must be turned in within 7 or 14 days? Apparently nothing happens if they are turned in late. What if the USCF said “Any tournament turned in on the 15day(use the US post mark or email time/date tag) will not be rated…end of line”. Something has to be done to get the TD/organizer to turn in the results in a timely manner. Part of the $ we parents and coaches pay is to get our kids rated. Untill somebody(USCF) takes a hard stand, this pattern of late submission will continue.

49

Dear Mike,

In just a few weeks, I will be submitting a tournament that will have upwards of 50 non-uscf members playing. The tournament is called the Blue Grass State Games. USCF in their delegate motions state that the official state games from any state will be rateable, and that players do not have to be members of the USCF to participate and gain a rating.

If this tournament were submitted online it would never pass at all. There will be multiple players without ID numbers who do not intend to ever join USCF. They are not required to. Several play every year and see their rating change just this one time.

Since an event like this is rateable, but could not possibly be submitted on line at this point, is it not my only option to submit it by hand? Should that event be rated ASAP? There is no other way to get it into the computer that I know of.

How do I answer and organizer who complains to me that memberships have not been processed from my events? Again, they are sent by mail. Should the players pay double? My master card is not reambursed by USCF in a timely manner, so I cannot remit funds to players who are impacted by this.

It is very unfair to point to the TD as the culprit when they do exactly as they should. The received memberships and tournament reports sit at USCF headquarters (in my case for months) without membership or ratings staff acting on them.

So membership issues and updated ratings are a problem at both ends. If USCF acted on the events in their files, then a backlog would not exist to the extent it does now. TD’s would be held responsible by their own constituencies when they see some reports run and others delayed. They would be held responsible if USCF acted in a timely manner on all events. But clearly events that are listed by USCF as received but not rated for weeks after the receipt (now months) are clearly USCF responsibility. The players paid memberships. The TD submitted the memberships and the reports to USCF. USCF cashed checks and ran mastercards. But the report is not rated. Memberships purchased are not activated. That is wrong. That is the complaint.

A paper submitted report that is not acted on for months “holds players hostage.” A changeover of the computer prior to it being readied and tested, holds players and organizers hostage. A software package that USCF expects organizers and TD’s to use without training holds us hostage. When USCF does not answer their phones so that questions about how to use the software can be answered, then those of use who love chess, but are not very computer literate are held hostage by the system.

Sincerely,

Steve Dillard

50

By using the USCF website we can see when the tournament report was received. I shouldn’t blame the TD if the tournament was mailed in properly. If the USCF lets it set, then they as our governing body must take the time(by doing it ASAP) and effort to correctly enter the ratings data and make sure it is corrected chronologically. I dont have an suggestion to correct their backlog. Good luck USCF! I’m very happy that this software upgrade is being put in now. It will take some time to evaluate it and find out what works best. Thanks for all the work!!

51

If the Blue Grass State Games is part of a state-wide event sanctioned by the National Congress of State Games, it is exempt under a Policy Board rule that goes back to 1989, and it can be changed to ‘membership exempt’ in the ‘section type’ pulldown.

However, we do not permit the TD to make that change, for obvious reasons.

What you would do is upload your rating report, then create a membership exception request for one of the non-members and in the ‘comments’ field note that this is the Blue Grass State Games and that it is a membership-exempt event, indicating which sections need to be changed.

The ratings department can then change the sections to ‘membership exempt’.

This means you will need to allow at least one working day before your event can be submitted for rating. (Hopefully we’ll be at that level of service on Membership Exception Requests soon.)

I think not rating an event just because it is late is a bit harsh, and certainly not fair to the players. The new system will permit us to do a better job of tracking TDs who are habitually late, maybe we’ll make that information more obvious on MSA. :slight_smile:

For events held in 2005 and beyond, we should be able to re-rate them any time we want, though I think there would have to be unusual circumstances to want to go back more than 6-8 months.

As I have stated more than once, I still don’t know how far back into 2004 we will be able to re-rate because of problems with the data from the old ratings system.

52

Nolan, what is your position at the USCF? I didn’t see anything listed for you. I assume you are in the computer processing of tournament results area. :question:

53

I am a computer consultant working with the USCF, not a USCF employee. I have been designing and programming the new USCF computer systems, a project that began in April of 2003 but didn’t really get into full gear until January of 2004.

54

Mike,

As Steve indicated, paper reports require extra fees. These reports should be treated equally: if “equal attention does not mean equal speed”, then why charge a higher fee? It’s my opinion that USCF should get the staff needed to process these reports on equal footing with online reports, which, BTW, are still delayed beyond belief!. TDs pay extra for paper reports expecting that they can be rated in a timely manner. They realize that it will take somewhat longer to process, but 6 months is ridiculous! I understand, somewhat, the USCF financial situation, but these long delays are wrong.

Also, allowing the TD to authorize membership exemption requests should not be hindered. TDs who would abuse this privilege could have their memberships revoked, fined, etc, and a TD who would abuse his honor shouldn’t be a TD anyway.

Steve,

My above statement and agreement with your situation being made, you really should try the online reporting method. The players will really appreciate the faster service, I’m sure you will really be excited by it, and, as Mike pointed out, you can see errors and make corrections before submission. His alluding to the fact that the TD’s job isn’t done with the signing of a paper report is true. Our job is finsihed when the report is deemed error free and rated.

I want to reiterate that even with online submissions, the reports are grossly delayed. For whatever reason that is, it should be dealt with. Why can’t you rate the reports that you and Nancy deem rateable, and then re-rate later if there should occur problems? Yu are setting up for re-rates anyway, so what’s the issue?

With Kind Regards,
Terry Winchester
Evansville, IN

55

Nolan: What kind of volume are we talking about here in games/month and tournaments/month? 5000games/month in 800tournaments?? Please give us an idea. My feeling is that most of us don’t understand the volume of games that must be processed. Any little thing that messes up the input will really slow up the process. This is just my guess. You are really helping me understand the process so I can rely information to the clubs my son and I attend on a regular basis. Even at this past weekends tournament I heard so many people just GUESSING why it takes so long and not knowing anything, or at least nothing they said corresponds to the info posted here.

Thank You !!!

56

Dear Mike,

I am afraid I have been unclear. I keep seeing you speak of re-rating events. The problem that I have is that events were never rated in the first place from as far back as October. They are listed as received but have not been acted on. The reason for my complaint is that players are waiting now 5 months for any rating at all.

This is not a re-rate issue. Why have three rating runs occurred and yet these events are untouched?

Steve

57

I don’t have access to the records on events mailed to the USCF office, they’re in New York, I’m usually in Nebraska but am currently in Tennessee. So I can’t provide answers about why specific events are not yet rated.

There are quite a few factors that contribute to events taking a long time to validate for rating. That was true under the old system, most of those factors are unchanged under the new system, and it may have added more factors than it subtracted due to the fact that we check for more types of errors or potential errors on the new ratings system.

As we have been telling people for months, most events get delayed because of membership issues. Grant Perks and I have been asked by Beatriz to formulate some recommendations on that issue, we’re trying to find a reasonable compromise between the ‘Attilla the Hun’ approach of not rating an event until the TD has collected memberships from all of his players and the ‘rate it now and don’t worry about the memberships’ approach.

There are other reasons events get delayed, sometimes they just get buried under a stack of other events or the person whose desk they’re on is not there to work on them.

At least online events can’t get buried on a hard drive, there’s already a weekly ‘tickler’ program running that e-mails TDs if their event has been in the online system more than a week without being ready to rate. And the ratings manager gets copies of all those e-mails to remind her of them as well.

The’re supposed to process events in oldest-ending-date order. However, in practice I’m sure that rule slips a bit. Also, some of the ratings staff are faster than others, some work more hours than others, some spend more of the hours they work entering ratings reports than others.

We’re hoping that the new office organization plan will solve several bottlenecks by giving us more staff trained on more tasks. Coupled with systems improvements (including those yet to come) and a lowering of the office workload due to online submissions, I believe we can get the USCF back to the point where memberships received in the mail are processed within a few working days and rating reports received in the mail are entered and the validation process begun within a week of when they arrive.

That won’t mean the total elimination of bottlenecks. I know the office is expecting a large package of memberships from the Amateur Team East this week, according to Steve Doyle it wil have around 70 new members in it, plus some number of renewals that Steve didn’t mention. Steve claims he doesn’t have sufficient TD staff to submit his memberships online, so it will take the office 2-4 hours to process just the new memberships from the ATE. I think the backroom TD for the ATE plans to submit the rating report online, but if it has upwards of 70 missing IDs in it, it’ll take a while for someone to plug them all in.

58

Geez. gimme a break, we’re still in transition mode on the new system!

I’m getting ready to run the next rate, and will probably do another one tomorrow or Friday. If both runs go well, I should be ready to go to an hourly schedule for ratings runs.

If you really think the USCF should have more staff, please consider becoming a Delegate and getting involved in the budgeting process, so you can help figure out how to meet a higher payroll.

The USCF had to lay off roughly half of the office staff in the last 20 months. Since then the backlog in processing both memberships and ratings has grown. As of earlier today, I was told that the office was 10 days behind on memberships received in the mail. (And that’s considering that over half of the memberships are now submitted online.)

59

Sorry folks, but no rate tonight (Wednesday), it blew up and it will take me another 3-4 hours tomorrow to get it ready to rate again.

Mike Nolan

60

I do give you the break, Mike. I was assuming that the EB members were the ones passing the policies. I never intended to disrespect your efforts. If the office hasn’t the manpower, nor the budget to obtain it, then at least lower the rating fees that go along with paper reports. It makes no sense to charge a higher price for less quality service. I can imagine the workload involved, and I empathize, but higher fees should get higher returns of service, as opposed to being an added penalty. TDs are already penalizing themselves (voluntarily, I admit) by submitting paper reports.

And I am an alternate Delegate for my state. I’ve never received Delagate Newsletters, nor the capacity to move a proposal or vote absentee. Many in my area are unable to attend the Del mtgs., we should be able vote by proxy.

I apologize for my previous tone.