Jim West On Chess: USATE Tie-breaks Issue Resolved

Saturday, March 10, 2012

USATE Tie-breaks Issue Resolved

Team Chess Mates of Rahway NJ has resolved its issue with the NJSCF regarding tie-breaks at the USATE 2012.

Although the U.S. Amateur Team System under rule 34G2 on page 203 of the USCF rulebrook is used for all other prizes, the Modified Median tie-break is used to determine the top five teams.

The NJSCF thinks that Modified Median is fairer whenever there are many participants.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov