Is there enough detail in the USCF policy regarding tournament anouncement procedure. An example is the HB tournament. They first anounced that you HAD to pay your entry fee (295)by January 1st to get the discounts. I paid, then just 2 or 3 days later i recieved my Chess Life with a big anouncement that the deadline was extended out till March. Which means they advised the USCF of this before people paid their money, but did not advise the public on their website. I could have held on to my 295$ for 2 more months!
#2 They(the HB) advised a certain rating policy of adding 100 points on to players with Fide ratings. Then after hundreds of people entered, changed the policy. I know a player(Russian!) who recently won the Chicago open under 2200 section clear, and has an official Fide rating of 2211 who WILL be playing in the under 2200 section. They advised him it was ok because he only had 14 Fide rated games(more than required to be official), and because his USCF is under 2200. The original anouncement explicitly advised the highest rating would be used and if Fide 100 points added. In both cases 2211 or 2311 he would be excluded according to the original advertised policy. I know him(the palyer) so i can say MAYBE his strength is under 2200 but if i was in that section i wouldn’t feel that way(the whole expert section of the Chicago open that he won, wont feel that way either).
#3 It hasn’t happened yet, but i believe at the last minute after people have (A)scheduled time off from work (a thousand bucks or more for some people!), (B)paid entry, (C) bought airfare, (D) booked hotels and rental cars, that boom, the HB tournament organizers plan to alter their PUBLISHED highest rating between the October and April supplement policy. Already there are several cases of people in for example the under 2000 section Ogunmefun(who is clearly expert strength), Reznikov, and numerous others who have been over 2000 during the specified time frame. The tournament organizers have given me NO indication that they plan to advise those players that they will have to play in the section the anouncement advises(and i have asked several times). This is highly upsetting as I myself have already purchased non refundable airfare, entered the tourney 2 months earlier than i had too and now this.
I know they are trying to make their tourney work out from various standpoints, and i appreciate them organizing the tournament. I only ask that they do what they publish, without sucker punching early entrants at the last moment with shocking changes to what was advertised. I hope the USCF can make them stick to what is published, and has the strength of ethic to do so.
There are some rules (Delegate-mandated) on carrying out commitments published in TLAs, but the sanctions have to do with not being allowed to advertise future tournaments. I doubt this will have much effect on HB.
The only point on which I disagree with you is the entry fees. An organizer can offer reduced (or even free) entry to anyone he wants. (Of course, he can’t charge more than he advertised.) You seem to be arguing that a store can never have a sale because someone else might have bought the item at a higher price.
I’m glad that you do agree on all of my other points. On the entry fee, all i’m saying is that i feel(so you may disagree) that it is a tad on the shady side, to knowingly cause me to pay early when you KNOW that i’m only paying because you said this was the deadline when you knew it wasn’t(i.e. trickery). Especially in a situation where you would be earning interest on the money for 5 months before i ever even get to take advantage of what i purchased.
The USCF has sort of a nuclear option as i call it of not rating an event that it doesn’t sanction - though i don’t know that there would ever be such a situation that something like that would have to be necessary. The reason it wouldn’t be necessary is because people usually do exactly what they publish so it’s normally not an issue. Though having people spend several thousand dollars on a tournament trip to find out it’s not what was advertised might be reason(it’s arguable anyway).
Think you better check this out (taken from the HB Foundation Website on 4/6/2005):
Important Rating Policy Update
Players who have an established USCF rating, or comparable, i.e. those for which no points are added, may be allowed to use that rating, even if they have a FIDE rating as well. For instance, there are many players who have an active national rating (especially USCF players, where the rating history can be checked easily) and also a FIDE rating earned through primarily US tournaments. The FIDE rating is often a bit lower, or nearly the same as the USCF rating. Often the FIDE rating is outdated or based on a few games which would not reflect a player’s true rating strength if the standard USCF formula of FIDE rating + 100 points were used. In the spirit of fairness and to remain consistent with the principle at the heart of the HB Global Chess Challenge’s policy, the Chief TD reserves the right to make a final decision regarding which rating will be used. This decision will be made after a complete and thorough check of the player’s rating history has been done. If there is any doubt or lack of information, the standard formula will apply.
Players should confirm their section before committing their travel plans. No refunds (other than entry fees) will be given to players who disagree with the Chief Tournament Director’s decision as to which section they will be assigned. Traveling players who plan to register at the tournament should be forewarned that they may end up playing a section that they did not anticipate. The best policy is to register well in advance so that you may be notified very early on of the Chief TD’s decision.
Yes this has been there about 2 months this was a change from their ORIGINAL policy, it doesn’t mention YET anything about them throwing out the highest USCF rating between October and April. Though, they appear to be allowing several players who are or have been over 2000 during this period of time to play in the under 2000 section, i’m sure there may be similar situations in other sections as well. When i have questioned them on 5 different occasions they have given no indication that said players would be required to use their highest USCF rating as originally advertised.
This is really a matter of customer satisfaction rather than ethics. In my opinion, their original policy was absurdly complicated and unworkable. Someone with more experience in running tournaments should have thought it through before they announced it. But they did announce it, and now that they have made the (probably inevitable) accommodation to reality, they’ve annoyed a lot of people. Caveat emptor.
Maybe, i think though that’s more semantics, If i manipulate you(knowingly trick you into paying before you have to), then after you have purchased change what i was selling you though i have already accepted payment. I think to some degree that is cheating or conning the buyer(making it an ethical question). Especially in this situation because, the changes that were made did not have to be made, but were made for organizer convenience. Now sure because this is the first run some hiccups are inevitible, but the changes that they made did not have to be made. Probably the only thing that needed to be adjusted in reality was amount of the prizefund to fit the demand better. If they had made it 350 grand, i’m sure they would have still gotten about the same amount of people, it would have still been the biggest tourney ever, and from an economic standpoint would have worked out better. Instead of suffering for their own mistakes/miscalculation though, what it appears to me , is that they are forcing the punishments of those mistakes on to pre-entrants, in an effort to try to raise attendance by any means to balance out the prize fund. Again I appreciate their effort for trying to create such a tournament, i am thankful it exists. I just wish they would stop making these changes which are so potentially negatively impacting to the entrants who they have already entered into an agreement with, and are now changing the rules of the agreement.
If the organizers had intended from the start to run a bait-and-switch, you might have a point. I doubt that was the case, however. They had unrealistic expectations of the number of entries to be expected, and when those entries didn’t materialize they tried dropping the price (or rather, extending the reduced price). Last month the price of RAM for my system dropped from $80 to $60, so I bought some. Two weeks later, it dropped to $40. Was the supplier being unethical? I don’t think so.
The supplier in your scenario, did not tell you to pay by a certain date or you would have to pay more, while full well knowing that it wasn’t true. In our case they knew this far before the first deadline as they had advised the USCF of the extension in time for it to be in chess life, yet made no mention of it on the website(where you pay). Further if you purchased the ram and accepted that you weren’t actually going to get it for 5 months, the waiting would be fine, but during the time you were waiting they let you know, oh the manufacturer of your ram is going to change, and instead of being 500 megs it’s going to be 256 because it works out better from a cost standpoint for us. I have no doubt that you(or at least most people) would have a problem with it. I do think so, in other words in the most common actually used ethical systems it would be an issue. I have let go of the 100 point rating addition even though i think some others should still protest. I just wanted to air what is happening before they OFFICIALLY(they appear to already be doing) come out with a bait and switch of allowing people who have had a USCF rating that puts them in to the next category and have dropped back down between October and April to play in the lower section. This in the hope of having the HB organizers abide by this portion of their anouncement. If they do come out with such a change to their announcement, and also fail to correctly place these players into the sections as has been advertised. I will have to request my funds back with interest plus the efforts and cost I have incurred including my non- refundable airfare, even to the extent of litigation for false advertisement. I just want them to stick to this one thing that they have advertised, one thing.