I was planning on setting up a chess 960 tournament to take place next month. By rote I was about to submit an online TLA. I then realized that I had no idea whether that was allowed, as obviously chess 960 would not use USCF ratings. Would I still be allowed to advertise my tournament via TLA regardless?
Furthermore, I’ve always put in unrated side events as part of the TLA. I’m now wondering if this is allowed either. Are you only allowed to advertise rated events?
Finally, would advertising an entirely unrated scholastic chess tournament with TLA also be banned? I would love to know.
At least the first two parts have been done before, and I’m pretty sure the “entirely unrated” as well (although that’s tougher to search considering that unrated players are almost always addressed in a TLA):
Chess 960 pairings could use US Chess ratings, but the event cannot (currently) be US Chess rated.
There was some talk a while back about adding a ratings system for Chess 960, it may not have generated enough interest to be worth doing.
You’d have to ask the publications department about whether you can advertise Chess 960 events, I seem to recall there was some discussion about having a category for that separate from other ‘unrated’ events/sections. US Chess usually promotes the bughouse events at national events it runs, so there’s certainly precedent for it.
I once was at a tournament that had USCF Rated and Unrated sections and a player who had not had 4 games published and was technically Unrated and thought he had to play in the Unrated section. Good news for him he won all his games easily and the prize - bad news for all the rest is they never had a chance and his wins were a waste of time (A player strength against <1000 strength)
When talking about sections that will not be rated by USCF I try to avoid using Unrated (better is Non-Rated or Not USCF Rated ?)
Will your TLA get rejected if you send in a time control without a d/0 in it? Thus, sending in a time control with 5 Round Swiss G/60 instead of 5 Round Swiss G/60, d/0? Or will the TLA translator just rename the tournament in the TLA to 5 Round Swiss G/60, d/5 which is not what was intended to start with?
Per the rules, such a TLA should be rejected, although I am unfamiliar with the office’s practices on this point.
5B2. Advanced publicity required time control information.
In all advance publicity which specifies the time control, the organizer is to indicate the full time control, including the delay or increment, as minutes (mm) and seconds (ss), e.g. G/90 inc/30 (or +30); G/30 d/5; G/10 d/3; G/5 d/0. The time control must be specified in Tournament Life Announcements and should be specified in other publicity such as flyer mailings, email and on web sites. It is acceptable for abbreviated publicity to refer the reader to more complete tournament details posted elsewhere.
Are you referring to TLAs or to tournament rating reports? Both should have full time control information, the tournament rating report will not pass validation if it doesn’t, the staff reviewing a TLA might (but probably shouldn’t) be more forgiving. What they definitely should NOT do is assume they know what the missing part of the time control should be.
Any time there is incomplete time control information for an event, that’s an argument or ruling waiting to happen.
New Question: When following rule 5F2a1 to state that “clocks without delay be set at G/35, d/0,” for a game that is really TLA advertised to be played G/30, d/5, shouldn’t this be stated in the pre-tournament announcements? Shouldn’t it be in the TLA with the time control announcement?
Secondly, if we are just going to let the players without a delay clock play a flat 30 minutes with no delay, then how is that starting all our tournament players with the same time control for rating purposes? We are not supposed to have 2 different time controls for our tournament players (G/30, d/0 and G/30, d/5) and expect that we can have our games approved for rating purposes, right? All players must have the same time control in order for our games to be rated, right?
I think you’re reading too much into that rule. Most clocks handle delay and increment these days, so you’re only dealing with those who don’t have modern clocks.
As I interpret the rule it means that G/35 is considered equivalent to G/30;d5 in the event of a non-delay-capable clock. That’s all.
Depending upon the event, not many of those games will go 70 minutes anyway.
5F2a1 is a variation. Per 5F2a (without the variation) your example of a non-delay/non-increment clock for a G/30;d5 time control would be set to G/30 (d0) with all players starting with the same base time.
When delay first came out there was a broad standard of taking the number of delay seconds and deducting that many minutes from the base time (i.e. G/120 became G/115;d5). That ended up with a number of strong players wanting to play without delay so they would automatically have extra time for games no longer than 60 moves (or longer if a number of their moves were quickly played in less than 5 seconds). Part of the reason for that deduction was due to the prevalence of 4 round G/30 tournaments on a weekday evening not being possible to do with delay and stay within the site closing time, so G/25;d5 was deemed to be the same as dual-rated G/30;d0. Later the rule about dual rating was changed (the number of delay seconds was finally added to the number of base time minutes and 30-65 was dual rated) so that G/25;d5 was dual-rated, the correlation with G/30;d0 was no longer needed and G/25;d5 time controls would be set as G/25 (d0) on non-delay clocks.
Yes, when following rule variation 5F2a1, that should be stated in the TLA since the rule says “This must be specified in all pre-tournament publicity that specifies the time control.” However, I wouldn’t use this variation and would just use the standard rule (I have no sympathy for those who only bring an analog clock or non-delay digital clock these days).