I think that’s the issue that needs to be looked at. The rules as they are currently written allows students like Yun Fan to be invited to a national invitational. Since the criteria was based on ratings, the organizers did the correct thing based on current rules.
Personally I think our closed championships should have rules closer to what FIDE requires in terms of length of residency before playing for a new federation. I know states like Maine have closed state championships that students attending school in the state are eligible to play in, but I think that’s very different from awarding a spot in an invitational event such such as US Woman’s Championship.
Yes, I was thinking something along the lines of the US Championship. It worked fairly well for the men over the past 3+ years, didn’t it? (AF4C used a similar system, just with more players invited.)
Yes, and I think it was the lack of residency rules that allowed Tony Miles to parachute into the U.S. Championship one year and bug out soon thereafter. I think within the space of a couple years he played for England, USA, Australia, then England again.
I think there are three questions here that the USCF rule makers should review and consider in view of the Yun Fan case:
Why do the current rules allow players under 20 immediate acceptance, while those older than that have a waiting period? This rule alone allowed a very deserving homegrown player to be bumped out in favor of brand new student.
What is the general approach we want to allowing players who are only in the United States temporarily to play in our most prestigious events?
Should there be a different standard for our championship tournaments as opposed to other official events, such as being accepted onto our Olympiad team or representing the U.S. in various international FIDE events?
It’s a matter of where you draw the line. FIDE’s rules on this are interesting in the sense that (as I understand it), they use fees to discourage short-term federation changing. The fees go away only after 3 years. Seems logical.
Didn’t this rule say that the immediate acceptance for someone under 20, and anyone, only applied to someone with no international experience and no FIDE ratings? See JOhn Hillary’s 9/29 post in this thread.
I don’t think so. “US status” does not imply “eligible for USCF invitations”. Consider a US unrated player with no known international experience who then has a single great USCF rated tournament. That player has US status. But is the player eligible for USCF invitations? I would not think so, yet.
The way I read it, players without FIDE experience (i.e., they have never represented another federation) can immediately qualify as U.S. even if they were born elsewhere. Players with FIDE experience, who have represented another federation, may qualify immediately as U.S. if they are college students under age 20. Players who do not fall into either of those categories have to meet other requirements. I think this stuff was modified in the last year or two, so there ought to be someone still on the EB who remembers what they had in mind.
In general you need an established rating for an invitation. That one tournament would have to be extraordinarily long to make the first rating an established rating rather than a provisional rating.
But overall I think Yun Fan has proven to be a worthy participant in the USA Women’s Championship. She defeated Tatev and Rusudan recently and drew with the Krusher but the key feather in her cap is how she was able to swindle me out of a draw in the US Open at Indy back in August. And I mean swindle because my FIDE rating is higher than hers. She’s quite a strong player ! Frank K. Berry
She’s hung tough and drawn some blood in the tournament, which I agree is reasonable for one of the lower rated players in an event with three IMs, where draws were not given easily.
I’m glad Yun Fan has done well, and that Abby Marshall would not have been able to play anyway. I hope both of them go on to become life-long active masters in the USA.
But it is beside the point… which is the issue of why foreign students under age 20 who come here are given immediate acceptance upon applying to change their federation to USA. Our homegrown players have enough trouble getting invitations to major master-level events without also being placed in competition with hundreds of masters from around the world.
Anyway, I know that Mike Atkins and Ruth Haring have said they will look into the issue, so we can hope that it will be resolved favorably. TOM
TOM