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About the CC Forum

Welcome to USCF's Correspondence Chess Forum. We frequently offer a topic for discussion but welcome comments related to any topic already in the CC Forum. We must insist that the tone of the comments be offered and presented in a professional manner. USCF will have sole discretion regarding comments not being appropriate for posting at this website. This area can be an excellent opportunity for CC players to be heard and be involved in making USCF Correspondence Chess even better!

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The new topic for discussion is:

As Correspondence Chess Director for USCF, I plan to offer Thematic e-mail events. As a player though I'd like your comments. Would you prefer that USCF set the thematic events or would you prefer that the player with White set the opening for the first few moves? Should these events be quads or 7-player events? What would be a reasonable entry fee? Should prizes be involved?

You can respond by e-mail to [email protected] regarding this topic or any other topic of interest to co.

Current topic

Here are comments received from Correspondence Chess players which relate to the Forum Topic: "Should a player be forfeited, regardless of the event, for overstepping the time control thereby eliminating the current procedure (for most events) of being allowed to continue play but given a warning and a reflection time penalty?

Steve Ham wrote, "I've never understood the rationale for allowing a person to exceed the allowed time limit TWICE before forfeiture. In addition to being a silly procedure, it diminishes chess enjoyment for other players. We all know what the time limit is, so let's play within that parameter. Sure, there are some dishonest players who, when short of time, falsely record "date received" or claim a postcard was lost in transit. But let's not give those players an additional tool to use to cheat the rest of us. The time limit has been generously set and thus needs to be enforced when exceeded."

Jim Dietz writes, "There really is no penalty for exceeding the time limit under current rules. This allows some games to go to the section end date. Suggest that on the second complaint in a section, all games in that section should be forfeited."

Anonymous? "I say, no, a warning first."

Tom Ashley states, "I think the current rule where the offending player gets a warning and is penalized reflection time is satisfactory. However, I believe that if a game delay results from a player making an ambiguous or impossible move, the player should be penalized. As I understand it, with the USCF there is a 5 day penalty for this but it is only applicable in the Golden Knights Finals and other elite sections. It should be applied in ALL sections. More than once I have had opponents who have done this 3 or 4 times over the game, and this type of ineptitude is more common in the lower sections such as the Golden Knights Preliminaries. It causes significant delays regardless of the level of the section."

Concerning an earlier topic we offered for discussion, "Reflection Time", we've received these responses:

Bill Naff wrote, "Dave's exact comment was that he feels more reflection time should be given for e-mail games because "it's not fair to assume that the transmit time is the date of receipt". In a way I can see his point, though I'm sure your're thinking (meaning Joan DuBois, CCD) that it's much simpler having only one set of rules!

Another comment related to "Reflection Time" is from Adam Bell. "I know that the ICCF give e-mail players 10/40. This seems like a minimum! Consider, in a normal postal game, transmission of moves takes about 4-6 days each way. If it only took 3 days that would be 2 months/30 moves (3x10 moves x 2 players) during which players can consider the games. However, tripling reflection time is absurd because in the above 2 months, each player can only guess at what move the opponent's might make, so that can lead to analysis time being wasted looking at various variations, which though reasonable, won't be played, whereas in e-mail chess you get the actual game position sooner!"

Adam also states, "If I e-mail a move and get a reply the same day, will the next day count as reflection time? (many people check e-mail daily) so it seems reasonable to me to say that if I send a move on 6/2/97 by e-mail, and there are no network problems, then my opponent will have received that move on 6/3/97, since I may have sent it after he/she checked their e-mail on 6/2/97."

Prior Topics in the Correspondence Chess Forum

July 1997 - Downtime Claims
May 1997 - Reflection Time: Should Time Controls be Changed?

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This page was last updated September 12, 1997