On the online tournament upload/entry interface, there is a box to mark whether the tournament is, among other things, scholastic. What difference does it make if a tournament (section, rather) is coded as scholastic or non-scholastic?
Alex Relyea
The Scholastic/non-Scholastic option has no effect these days, it dates back to when the ratings fees were different for scholastic and non-scholastic events. It is scheduled to be removed in the next update of that form. Also, the ‘FIDE event’ option is being changed to a separate checkbox, because it is possible to have something that is both FIDE rated and a match.
A separate issue is just what IS a ‘scholastic tournament’? I don’t know that there is a universally agreed upon definition.
I’m glad to hear it. I had a lot of trouble a few years ago when I tried to upload a FIDE-rated match.
Alex Relyea
Any section or tournament where ALL of the players are K-12? That’s not a universally agreed upon definition!?
First, when is a player K-12? I know someone age 16 who is in college, I know someone age 19 who is still in high school.
You also probably need to look at each section separately. More than a few tournaments are mostly scholastic events, but have a section for adults. (We even offer Family & Friends side events at most national scholastic events.)
Even that isn’t perfect. Suppose you hold open quads, and the four players in one section all happen to be under age 15, but that’s the only section in which that occurs. Is that section a ‘scholastic tournament’ by design?
Then there is the ‘house player’ issue. If an adult sits in for one game, does that make it a non-scholastic event? (It does make the event ineligible for JTP.)
Yes, you would probably have to look section by section for which ones are scholastic. TD/A already allows organizers to lump all kinds of different sections into one tournament (main event, blitz, parents, side quads, extra rated games) as long as they are credited to the same affiliate and the same chief TD.
The USCF scholastic rules address non-traditional age and grade levels.
Michael Aigner
True, but can you look at a crosstable and be SURE whether there weren’t any non-traditional age players in it? I can’t, even though I have access to everyone’s birthdate.
As I said in a post a couple of week back, I have considered adding an optional self-reported ‘scholastic event’ checkbox, but that might not produce any more reliable data about scholastic events than a hard and fast age rule would. (Chuck Lovingood tells me that when he looks at the ‘this event had a TLA’ checkbox, as much as 25% of the time the answer is wrong. Surely the chief/submitting TD knows whether or not the event had a TLA?)
The best I’ve been able to do regarding scholastic events is to come up with a fuzz factor. If an event has X players and no more than Y of them are over age Z, then the event is a scholastic event. And I’m sure that isn’t perfect, either.
Many of the tournaments I run are “scholastic” but if I have a multiple section event with no errors I’m not going to go into every section and change it from non-scholastic to scholastic and rerun the validation. It says ready to submit, I’m submitting it. If you had a check box during the submission process then I’m more apt to categorize it as a scholastic event.
Absolutely NOT–for example, if a tournament or section is advertised for players of all ages, and only
those K-12 attend, it should be classified as a non-scholastic.
Secondly, in a scholastic, the prizes are generally non-monetary, such as trophies, ribbons,
etc.
My thoughts,
Rob Jones
Yeah, Rob, but you can’t look at a crosstable and know whether or not it was an ‘all ages’ event. (Nor can you tell what the prizes were.)
How many ‘all age’ events with only a K-12 turnout do we have in a year? I’m not sure, though probably not a huge number.
I wonder how many trophy-only adult/all age tournaments we have in a year?
One fewer, since the Western Mass./Connecticut Valley championship decided that that lost too much money.
Alex Relyea
Does that mean they’re going to cash prizes or is the event being discontinued?
At least one of us is confused. 
Why? Just because the option is coming out of the ‘section type’ selection, where it is no longer needed to differentiate between rates, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t provide useful classification information for analysis.
It is possible to have an event which is both ‘scholastic’ and ‘FIDE rated’, as well as one that is ‘scholastic’ and a ‘match’, or possibly even ‘scholastic’, ‘FIDE rated’ and a ‘match’. That’s why those choices need to be independent of each other.
I was amazed to see that tournament still be running as a trophy only tournament after all these years. I think I won my first trophy at that tournament in 1974 or 1975.
Has it stopped or will they finally start offering cash? If I recall correctly it was on President’s Day weekend. That date alone is enough to kill off a tournament.
OK, I understand now. I know what a scholastic section is, but as has been discussed, a scholastic event is a lot fuzzier.
SwissSys, and I assume WinTD, still has a checkbox for scholastic events, which seems to go into the thexport file. Would that be useful? I carefully check the box every time, even though it doesn’t do anything any more. I have always wished it would mark all the sections as scholastic in TD/A, but if that designation is going away too, it’s a moot point.
I haven’t looked at WinTD in a while, I’m not sure if it has a checkbox for scholastic event or not.
We ignore that field in the upload file, because it is at the tournament level (where it was never very useful) rather than at the section level.
My mistake. They announced last year that they were going to begin awarding cash prizes but this year, with a new TD (possibly a new organizer) it appears to be a trophy only tournament.
http://www.westernmassachusettschessassociation.org/?q=node/66
Alex Relyea
At least through 4.03 the checkbox still exists.