Can Armageddon games be rated?

[MSoszynski]

I am running my Club's small, standardplay Swiss tourney. The planned five rounds have been completed and the results already submitted to the ECF (after each round).

Two players have finished ahead of the rest on 3½ points each. They had already played each other in a drawn game.

My idea for a tie-break is to reverse the colours for a single play-off game with Black the tourney winner if the game is drawn. (Time control equal and the same as the rest of the tourney.) If drawn, it will be submitted to the ECF as a draw though.

My question is whether this game is ineligible for rating because of the Armageddon factor. Half-Armageddon, you could say, because times will be equal.

PS I asked ChatGPT for a word for Half-Armageddon and it came up with Armageddette!

[Roger de Coverly]

My idea for a tie-break is to reverse the colours for a single play-off game with Black the tourney winner if the game is drawn. (Time control equal and the same as the rest of the tourney.) If drawn, it will be submitted to the ECF as a draw though.

I would think you should submit the result as played and the internal rule you use to determine a club champion is of no consequence for rating.

More generally, can games with unequal times be rated in the ECF system?

[ThomasEvans]

If both players get the same time control, then it's not an Armageddon game, and it can be rated as usual. That one player must win for the purposes of the tournament is irrelevant (you can get a must win situation in the regular rounds in many tournaments, and that doesn't affect the rating).

I wouldn't suggest using that method as a playoff though, because the higher drawing rate in classical games would make Black the favourite here (and if they failed to win as White in the regular tournament, I'm not sure if they be given the advantage here) - I would instead suggest using two rapid games, if still tied then two faster rapid games, followed by pairs of blitz until someone gets a winner. Something like what the FIDE World Cup is currently using:

If the match is tied after the classical games, players will play two rapid chess games, with 25 minutes plus a 10-second increment per move, per player.
If the match is still tied, players then will play two more rapid chess games, with 10 minutes plus a 10-second increment per move, per player.
If the match is still tied, players then will play two blitz games, with 5 minutes plus a 3-second increment per move, per player.
If the match is still tied, a single blitz game, with 3 minutes plus a 2-second increment per move, will be played to decide the match. A drawing of lots will determine which player plays white. If drawn, the players will switch colors and play again, until a decisive result is obtained.

Except you may want to change the time controls slightly to fit this into one evening (e.g. 25+5, 10+5 for the first rapids). This also has the advantage in that you can submit the playoff games for ECF rapid rating (and blitz, should you get that far).

[ThomasEvans]

More generally, can games with unequal times be rated in the ECF system?

I had a look through and nothing in the grading rules or the laws of chess says that both players must have the same amount of time allotted (just that they must both have at least 60 minutes for it to be standardplay) - I may have missed something though. A few events have situations where both players have unequal time (e.g. in some team events such as local leagues, a team that causes a late start may have time deducted from their clocks to compensate for the delay), but these are usually as a penalty and not as a general rule.

TL;DR - I wouldn't think a time differential like an armageddon would be accepted for full rating (and we have the precedent of FIDE not rating armageddon games as blitz for their events), unless this was as a penalty for something that is pre-defined in the rules.

[IM Jack Rudd]

There is precedent for unequal timed games being graded in the ECF system - the Hastings Masters a few years ago gave black a clock advantage, and that was graded.

[Brian Valentine]

There does not seem to be anything formalising equal scheduled time in the rating rules. There is mention of a time limit (singular) in some places. If one thinks about it the rating system has no way of adjusting for any time advantage. So the rating team would reject armageddon results if such cropped up (despite precedent)

[MSoszynski]

My idea for a tie-break is to reverse the colours for a single play-off game with Black the tourney winner if the game is drawn. (Time control equal and the same as the rest of the tourney.) If drawn, it will be submitted to the ECF as a draw though.

I would think you should submit the result as played and the internal rule you use to determine a club champion is of no consequence for rating.

So, would that apply to a themed tourney too? If so, I'm surprised there aren't many/any that I've heard of.

The scenario is for a Scandinavian Defence Tourney (say) in which tourney points are earned only by the players who play or allow the Scandinavian. All games are rated as normal, however they start. So, players are as free to choose their openings or defences as in any other rated games — except that their progress and pairings in this particular tourney depend partly on how their games actually start.

[ThomasEvans]

So, would that apply to a themed tourney too? If so, I'm surprised there aren't many/any that I've heard of.

The scenario is for a Scandinavian Defence Tourney (say) in which tourney points are earned only by the players who play or allow the Scandinavian. All games are rated as normal, however they start. So, players are as free to choose their openings or defences as in any other rated games — except that their progress and pairings in this particular tourney depend partly on how their games actually start.

I'm not surprised at all there aren't tournaments like that - limiting tournaments to only people that like to play specific openings will massively decrease your pool of entries, which would make such tournaments unattractive to organise on a cost basis.

Also, I'm not sure if that would be allowed in the laws of chess, either in terms of the starting position or the end result (can you give someone 0 points for winning but with a different opening?). But sometimes the question you should be asking isn't "could I do this", but "should I do this" - the answers are often different

[Matt Mackenzie]

There have been a few prominent "themed" international tournaments in the last 50 years, and I think they were FIDE rated?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"If one thinks about it the rating system has no way of adjusting for any time advantage. So the rating team would reject armageddon results if such cropped up (despite precedent)"

The person reporting the result could be sneaky and just say "this was a blitz result"...

[NickFaulks]

There have been a few prominent "themed" international tournaments in the last 50 years, and I think they were FIDE rated?

They weren't supposed to be.

[NickFaulks]

The person reporting the result could be sneaky and just say "this was a blitz result"...

Rating Officers can lie about all sorts of things. Problems arise when the loser complains.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Rating Officers can lie about all sorts of things. Problems arise when the loser complains."

True, and even sometimes the winner. One very low-rated player a few years ago was astonished to see his rating leap upwards, so queried it. Investigation revealed that he had been awarded a 20-0 match win against someone who wanted a lower rating...

[Paul McKeown]

FIDE does not rate Armageddon games.

QUOTE:
1.2 Games where the players have different playing times are not rated.

FIDE HANDBOOK, FIDE RAPID & BLITZ RATING REGULATIONS

https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/B02RB ... ions202210

[Richard Bates]

Whatever the rules say (which is obviously rather important!) I would have thought that the simple argument against rating Armageddon games is that they are, by design (not incidentally as can be the case eg. in the last round of a tournament) played with different results meaning different things to the two players. That should be sufficient to invalidate any rating of them. A draw is rated differently to a win, even though for the players a draw and a black win have a distinction without a difference.