Tournament Schedule

Here is the news article about the rated tourneys:

https://www.chess.com/news/chesscom-to-host-uscf-quick-rated-play-9414

and here is the schedule from that (events show up 1 hour before the scheduled start):

List will be updated if there are changes to times or days

US Chess Monday Blitz:

• USCF Blitz held every Monday at 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern
• 5 rounds
• 10 | 0 time control

AND

• USCF Blitz held every Monday at 8 p.m. Pacific, 11 p.m. Eastern
• 7 Rounds
• 5|0 time control

US Chess Wednesday Blitz:

• USCF Blitz held every Wednesday at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern
• 7 rounds (fewer if not enough participants)
• 3|2 blitz time control

US Chess Friday Rapid:

• USCF Rapid held every Friday at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern
• 5 rounds
• 15|10 time control

US Chess Saturday:

• 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern
• All events 5 rounds
• Week 1, 1st Saturday: Blitz -- 10|0
• Week 2, 2nd Saturday: Quick/ Rapid -- 15|2 
• Week 3, 3rd Saturday: Blitz -- 10|0
• Week 4, 4th Saturday: Regular -- 30|0 (changed January 2021)
• Week 5, 5th Saturday: Quick/Rapid -- 15|10

I really like the idea of USCF online play with a time control of 15/10. 

This is a pretty cool idea. Will they add more days?

I'm not sure if more days are an option or not.

So does this actually affect your USCF rating?

Yes, the USCF Online Rating for Quick and Blitz (for the matching Chess.com format).

Great work. I am excited to participate.

There aren't any planned USCF long time control online tournaments, and I personally hope there never will.

Sure they can cheat in 15/10; why couldn't they? That being said, I won't avoid those time controls.

If cheating is a concern, then I guess we can throw Dan Heisman's recommended 45/45 to the wind?

My opinion is if they cheat, they cheat, I ain't gonna worry about it. It just gives me something better to study

It is just an Open, no sections.

There is more risk cheating in these events than there is on normal Chess.com games. All accounts are directly tied to a real person and there could be ramifications with the USCF if cheating occurs.

Actually, the behavioral science research shows that most people respect honor systems when they are perceived as fair and are at least somewhat easy to monitor. I believe the freakanomics guys did something on this a few years ago. So I would assume that most people won't cheat. And as Martin Stahl said, it would be pretty risky to cheat in one of these joint events. You would have to expect quite a lot of scrutiny of the games, and if (and when) you were discovered, you would likely be banned from both USCF and Chess.com. Talk about chess ostracism! Who wants to go play on ICC?

I wonder if there is anyone else interested in a Saturday or Sunday 15/10 event. I'd like to play, but Friday evenings aren't a great time slot for me.

Just signed up to join this group & looking forward to playing soon.  I'm not available for the blitz Wed but hopefully will be approved in time to play the quick rated time control on Friday. :)

Found out more information on this question. The current plan is to run as is for a while and then consider the possibility of increasing the number of tourneys based on the participation in the events.

i played against one very obvious cheat in the first uscf online icc blitz event i participated in, do not think they were punished in any way; no other issues in the remainder of the 30 games i played.

I keep missing this...

One suggestion: I really like to play to games against each opponent in blitz tournaments.   This might require it be broken up into sections or more rounds.

Updated the first post to change the number of rounds to 5

How do you know they cheated?

Petrosianic wrote:

ChessSpawn49 wrote:

Martin_Stahl wrote:

ChessSpawn49 wrote:

Chessattackman wrote:

did a little experiment using the Chessmaster 10 engine.human condition being what it is, and being trained as a lawyer, I simply assume the worst when the opportunity to cheat is present.  

i played against one very obvious cheat in the first uscf online icc blitz event i participated in, do not think they were punished in any way; no other issues in the remainder of the 30 games i played.

That would be rated under Regular and Quick rating systems and I'm guessing the USCF isn't going to allow online games that fall under the regular rating.