Logic of USCF Rating Supplements

This topic is about a potential flaw (for a lack of a better word) in the USCF rating system. I'm pretty sure it has been already covered by the USCF, but I do not know where to find the information. So here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Say you have a USCF rating of 1000.

Say you went to a chess tournament in April, and you did really well and your rating is scheduled to go up to 1200 on the first of May.

Say you went to another chess tournament before the first of May, and you did really badly in it, and it was just a standalone rating of that month it would go down to 800.

So in this situation, I have multiple theories about what would happen, and I'm ranking them from least likely to most likely (in my mind)

1. Your rating would stay the same.

2. Your rating would be set to the latter tournament result.

3. Say if the rating changes for both of the tournaments were different, the higher rating would be subtracted by the difference of the smaller rating from the original rating.

4. Your rating would be set for the first tournament result.

5. I had another theory for this one but I forgot it. Sorry.

Well, someone please tell me which one is right, or if none of them are right tell me what is!

Tournaments will usually say what rating they'll use for the reserve sections. 

I'm talking about the ones that use the monthly supplement generated the month before.

They'll say something like "using your rating on X date" , so the supplement rating published online at X date is the one that's used.

That makes some sense but also no sense at all. Why then would they have the supplements in the first place?

AFAIK it is to allow for out-of-sequence result filings.

I didn't feel like reading your OP, but I have experienced one related thing before - if your rating goes up way above the rating peak for a section in a tournament right before that tournament, you can still play in that section, instead of being placed in a higher section. (A lot of players in the former section aren't happy as a result)

When you play an event, you are paired by your last effective published rating (published ratings become effective the 1st of the month). 

When an event is rated, it uses your current, unpublished rating for the rating formulas. Rerates will impact the overall values some. The only real impact is that your pairings may be a little harder/easier depending on whether your rating went down/up between rating periods.

In part I am still confused but also I feel like I understand. It's confusing me.

The main thing to realize is that each tournament is rated independently using the most recent actual rating you have. Published ratings are used for pairing purposes in events but that rating is only used for the rating algorithm if it is the rating you had after your last submitted event.

It probably wouldn't happen today because there is little lag time between rating updates.  But, there was a time when it took the USCF two to three months to publish your new rating (They didn't have the software that they have today).

I once had an opponent who received an upset prize when he beat me.  His published rating was 300 points below mine.  His unpublished rating was 200 points above mine.  The TD went by the published rating.

You probably can get that still today with players that have back-to-back events and have good results at one of them, giving a good rating boost. But yeah, less likely.

It doesn't happen often, but the rules allow the TD to assign a rating to any rated player for the tournament.  It's Rule 28E in the fifth edition.  I don't know what it is in the sixth edition.

The only instance of this that I have seen was in the Millionaire Chess Open Number 3 where a player was moved to a higher section after two rounds.  Apparently, the TD thought that he was playing way above his published rating (Rule 28H, fifth edition).

I made a mistake in my other post.  It was the World Open, not MC3.  I never saw the details, but the player involved was one of those accused of sandbagging in MC1 and MC2.  It's somewhat amusing when you look at the player's tournament record.  There are two entries for him in the 2016 World Open.  Unless you know the details, it looks weird.

I think that we are talking about two different players.  The highest rating of the player that I am referring to was 1857 prior to the World Open.  I think that the organizers were keeping a watch on him because of the MC2 publicity.