Rules and schedule

Teams:

here are the teams participating in the 2025 US State Vote Chess League

Standings 1:

Standings 2:

Schedule:

@ means the team on the left plays as black

Round 1:

Round 2:

Round 3:

Round 4:

Round 5:

Round 6:

Round 7:

Rules:

Season: 2025

Format: Round-robin - 7 rounds

game time: 3 days per move

Match Settings: When setting up matches, please use the following match name: USVCL 2025 R(#): (challenging team) vs (team being challenged)

Game Type: Standard Chess

Color: Challenging team is white, team being challenged is black

Challenges: Challenges can be issued 5 days before the start time and should be issued 2 days before the start time. when the challenge is issued please report it to this Forum. The team being challenged will have 2 days after the start time to accept. If this fails to happen, I will reach out to both admins and try to get it started. No Punishments will be issued unless I fail to get a response from a club.

Prizes: you can brag about how you placed on your club homepage. - if you want me to design a trophy, reach out to me
Next year format: depends on registration before next season, will play by ear. 
Tiebreakers: The first tiebreaker will be head-to-head results. The second tiebreaker will be the strength of victories. The third tie breaker will be better record as black and the final tiebreaker will be coin flip. Each tie breaker will be used to eliminate 1 team, so after tiebreaks are used to eliminate a team, they restart. 
Removal of Players: admins are allowed to remove players at their own discretion

Challenge Forfeits: If a match fails to start by the start date, I, or another vote chess admin will reach out to both club admins. if an admin fails to give me a response, the match will be forfeited

Cheating: Not Tolerated! if a player on your team gets banned for Cheating, report it to here immediately so we can discuss the consequence. This will be taken Case by Case and there isn't a specific punishment for cheating. Please remember that using games database is legal, but using a chess engine is not.

Here are signs to detect if a player on your team is cheating:

- Always recommending the best move, even in complicated situations

- recommending complicated moves without explanation

- sometimes recommending overly complex good moves and other times recommending obviously bad ones

- voting for robotic moves

- voting for a move the chess engine recommend even when the team consensus is a different move

If any of these are happening, report it to me.

Timeouts: Teams should not time out. timing out on 2 separate occasions will result in a 1 year suspension from the USVCL.

--

If I am missing something please put it in the comments. I will edit the rules and delete your comment to prevent confusion. Thanks

Trophies are always nice. If desired, I can make them in the style of the USTCL trophies, but it's very possible you can make something better. 😆

Thanks. Game is 3 days? Or 2?

its 3 days per move

Nice, thanks!

Andrew, your challenge link takes you to the cheating forum.

Thank you for the update. As stated in the rules, please don’t issue challenges more than 5 days before the start date. You can’t schedule these matches so I want to get them as close to the start date as possible

So they start as soon as they are accepted. Thanks, I was wondering how that worked.

Oops okay I'll cancel that challenge.

Kind of a bummer they don't let you put a start date in the challenge.

I guess it's too late, the challenge was accepted and I don't see a way to cancel it. Is it possible to do that?

Ok go ahead with this challenge. It’s close enough to the date anyways

How do we handle multiplayers?

As I said, admins are allowed to remove players at their own discretion

Have a question. The @ team is black and the challengine team is white. But then in the table, some of the challenging teams are the ones playing black. Kansas vs Minnesota R1, for example.

Minnesota is supposed to be white. Sorry for the confusion. If an @ is indicated in the schedule, the team that plays @ another team is supposed to be black. Think of it as the home team is white.

I get it now. Thanks for clearing that up. The table below confirms what you were saying too.

I recently told a player about the rule limiting their play to one team per season in the daily league, namely the first team on which they played a match. What is the rule for the vote chess league? That player's other team isn't participating in vote chess.

If the player isn’t playing for a different team then I think it is fine. The problem with vote chess is that I can’t see the players on either team until the match ends. I have the rules set so if you believe someone is detrimental to the team you can remove them. If you believe they are playing for a different team you should also remove them.

The player is trustworthy so I have no problem with it.