The usual blucky hangover from an unsatisfying G/40 quad yesterday left me wondering: What is the minimum time allowed for Regular/Standard rated chess in countries other than the USA?
Not that this will ever change now, but in the old Marvel comic What If vein: Suppose that when SD was approved for rated games, (at the time there was but one rating system), in 1988 or so…that the minimum time threshold was set at G/60 or G/45?
Imagine.
I have news for you: it was! The first sudden death time control to be approved by the Delegates was G/60 and was limited to scholastic events only. It was later on that it was expanded to open events and quicker time controls, down to G/30.
– Hal Terrie
For FIDE standard ratings, Article B.02.1.1 specifies:
Those minimum times include increment. So, for instance, if you have an event where the highest rated player is 2199, you could use G/60 inc/30 as an acceptable time control, since the base time plus the increment time for sixty moves would be ninety minutes.
Then the great scholastic boom would not have happened. Most scholastic chess depends on treating GAME/30 as though it was regular chess.
Alex Relyea
Thanks. I meant what about tournament play in other nations that is not FIDE-rated, but is rated by the national federation under its relatively most serious rating system. (i.e. USCF Regular)
Do other countries have G/30-G/40 quads and Swisses, with three to five rounds played in one day? If so, are they rated as regular/standard by the national federation?
I have recently started to play more. For once my chess mojo coincided with a stretch of more free time. G/30-G/45 is what’s out there. Wish I could find more slower time control events. Of course, there are practical issues there.
Not that this is a new issue, but I sometimes vow not to play any more fast time control events. This usually after a game like yesterday, where I “should” have beaten a Master in a G/40 d5—but as usual ran low on time, got lost in the tick-tock fog and eventually lost the game, with seconds left on the clock. (“Should” takes on new meaning in the faster half of the Dual-rated range, more or less.)
I do not enjoy winning games that way, even…but that’s the way we roll these days.
Then, once you soberly calculate how much time and money you must commit to play in a slow time-control tournament, you wind up back at the next G/40, or sitting in front of the PC playing online—or doing something other than chess altogether.
Just wondering how it works in the rest of the world.
Many (most?) other countries do not have a national rating system, but just use FIDE ratings.
Alex Relyea
I can think of a number of countries that maintain some form of ranking or rating system: Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Russia, Iceland. I suspect there are many others I’m not aware of.
In many cases, as in the USA, the majority of rated players are ones who aren’t involved in international play. These players are unlikely to show up in USCF rated events, so most organizers won’t have run across those other ratings.
That’s the impression I get, based on what I read and hear. The only one I have seen first-hand is England and BCF. (I had great good fortune in the summer of 1986, when the K-K match in London coincided with a three-week, er, “study” session in Oxford.)
It seems BCF, or ECF or whatever, sets the cut-off at G/60: englishchess.org.uk/ecf-grading-system/
I like it. Two rating systems: G/10-G/59 is Rapid, whilst G/60 and slower is Standard. Increment is factored in the usual way. No Blitz system.
Basically what this does is follow FIDE’s lead, while providing serious rated play for games in the G/60-G/89 or 119 range—slow enough to feel like real chess, but too fast for FIDE Standard, depending on players’ ratings.
I think I like it. Bland food suits me, I don’t mind cool dreary weather and I used to play …b6, too. Hmm.
P.S. In ECF play, FIDE LOC must be followed. I’m still not sure about that for the kinds of USCF-rated events I see, but perhaps it’s inevitable.