Apparently that ‘senior TD’ never bothered to ask the office about where the line is between dual and regular-only. But we have a long history of TDs submitting events at time controls in order to force them into specific ratings systems, even when the event was clearly advertised at some other time control. And the office has, to my knowledge, never sanctioned anyone for this. (Or for much else, IMHO.)
He said Walter Browne told him to submit his tournaments played at G/60;d5 for rating at G/65;d5 to get around the programming incorrectly dual rating G/60;d5.
I’m confident Walter Browne said no such thing, and I wouldn’t bet on Walter Brown doing that either.
Walter Brown (the NTD, not the GM) had a tendency to skirt the rules to accomplish certain things, so I don’t totally discount the possibility he might have said it.
But I think the time control rules are very clear in that MM+SS has to be GREATER than 65 for an event to be regular-only. And I’m quite sure that’s how the ratings programming interprets time controls.
Since for the most part people still don’t really care much what their quick rating is, even though quick ratings can now be used to initialize other ratings, this isn’t a crisis. Threads like this can help re-educate the misinformed.
I can see Walter thinking a person was merely asking what time control would not be dual rated and the person asking the question thinking it was a suggestion to adjust the reported time control to get what the asker wanted.
The type of rules that might be “skirted” are ones such as a rule saying “should not” (traditionally that means “must not unless you have a gosh darn good reason”) and having the experience and confidence to know whether it is a case of a gosh darn good reason. Another group of situations that some people think skirt the rules may be 1A situations and Walter has the experience to know when 1A is reasonable to invoke.
I don’t remember any other type of situation where Walter might have skirted the rules.
IMHO, the office’s response should always be: What time control were the games played under? The answer to that question determines what ratings system(s) it is under.
The office’s implementation of dual rating (back in 2001) which in effect meant TDs could decide whether some events were dual-rated or not was flawed from the get-go, the time control rules have been and should remain unambiguous. (IMHO, the Delegates were clear on that point, it was the office that muddied things.)
I thought that wasn’t hashed out until a dual-rated time control could be programmatically done using a single rating report (for a while the office would submit the rating report once for regular rating and a separate time, with a different tournament ID number, for quick rating - possibly charging the TD for each one).
That was the fix to what was IMHO a bad policy decision, to charge TDs double for dual-rated events so that there were two independent events (one regular rated, one quick rated) rather than just eat the staff time to create both event IDs.
Because TDs had the option to pay the extra fee for the quick part of dual rating or not (for something they didn’t really want, since those events were already regular-rated), they got the mistaken impression that they had the freedom to choose which events were dual rated and which were not. 15 years later there are still many TDs who believe it is their choice.
The above was from August 5
The laundry list is done.
new.uschess.org/news/td-certifi … ruary-2022
Excellent, thanks Jeff!
Normally a rule change would have to wait until the annual business meeting. Certification rules have a delegate-approved alternate process where TDCC can submit approved changes to the EB and then the EB can opt whether or not to implement them immediately and thus these changes can go into effect six months earlier than most rule changes (actually more like 10 months since most rule changes are made effective the following Jan 1). Not every submitted TDCC change has been implemented by the EB and not every EB request for a change has been approved by TDCC (the double-approval process is similar to the US congress/president idea of checks and balances).
PS The delegates have also approved some certification rule changes that did not initiate from either the EB or TDCC. The larger number of the delegates provides its own type of checks and balances.
The language in 14 b and the subsequent TD Tip seem to contradict each other.
The wording “or IA/FA that meets US Chess requirements for Senior TD and for the expected size of the event.” makes it seem like you don’t have to actually be certified a US Chess Senior TD here (otherwise they would be certified as a US Chess Senior TD and there would be no need for this statement) but the TD Tip says the person must be certified as a US Chess TD.
Also, what does “or IA/FA that meets US Chess requirements for Senior TD” mean? If it means all the requirements, they would be certitifed as a US Chess Senior TD. Does it mean just the experience requirements?
The wording in Rules 14 could probably use some clarification and updating and b and c could probably be combined into one rule.
Not all IA’s are US Chess members. In fact, I suspect that the vast majority of IA’s aren’t.
And your point is?
Wouldn’t the wording in the proposed paragraph b. (reproduced below) take care of this?
Bill Smythe
IA/FA are administered by FIDE. US Chess Senior TD is administered by US Chess. Got it now?
I think the point here is that ‘meets the requirements for senior TD’ is not the same thing as ‘holds the senior TD certification’.
I can think of several certified club and local TDs who meet the experience requirements for senior TD but don’t hold senior TD certification because they haven’t taken (or passed) the senior TD exam.
I understand that.
I see two problems here. The trivial problem is that you use two different plurals of TD in your proposed TD Tip. In my opinion, “TDs” is correct and “TD’s” is an eyesore (that’s a contraction or a possessive, not a plural), but you should at least be consistent.
The more serious problem is that clause (b) stipulates certain US Chess conditions for becoming a FIDE National Arbiter. I suspect that FIDE determines who can or cannot become a FIDE Arbiter (and how this is accomplished), and that US Chess has nothing to say about it. I also suspect that this is Tom’s point.
This is incorrect. Look at the rules, new.uschess.org/sites/default/f … nrules.pdf. To become a FIDE National Arbiter in the US, you have to go through US Chess and US Chess requires that you be a US Chess Senior TD in order to be able to become a FIDE National Arbiter.
“In US Chess, the National Arbiter must be a SrTD or higher and apply/pay the license fee through the US Chess office in order to direct FIDE rated events.”