2013 Greater Philadelphia Chess League

Location: Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School, 2600 S. Broad Street (Broad & Shunk Streets, Philadelphia. Same site as last year)

Dates (All Sundays): January 27th, February 24th, March 24th, April 21st & May 19th

Time: 2 rounds, G/85 TD/5 (85 minutes with 5 second delay) each day (as traditionally scheduled) 1st round at 10 am, 2nd round at 2:00 pm.

Open to teams of 4 with an Average Rating under 2000.

Playoffs: Like last year there will be playoff matches on the last meeting in May. The 4 highest scoring teams will do 2 rounds elimination matches for the title. (Draw odds will go to the team with the better regular season scores) Teams not making the playoffs will still play rated matches on the last day.
Entry fee: $100 per team for the season ($25 per player for teams splitting the entry fee amongst the four players)

Prizes (Trophies for the following):

League Champions (highest scoring team). The League Champions will also received a money prize, $400 (based on 20 entries)

Top Novice team (highest scoring team with an average rating under 1600)

Most Valuable Player, “MVP” (highest scoring individual)

Top Scholastic (highest scoring player grades K-12)

Top Elementary (highest scoring player grades K-6)

Top College (highest scoring player enrolled in undergraduate or grad school)

Top Senior (highest scoring player ages 50 and up)

Upset Prize (biggest rating difference win, difference “half-ed” for draws)

Rating notes for league:

As in past years, to allow flexibility when forming teams -captains can use either players ratings in the December 2012 rating supplement, the January 2013 or the February 2013 and future official supplements as the year goes on.

Also, adults new to USCF can play with an assigned rating of 1200. This number is based on the general performance of new USCF players in past years and the idea is to encourage captains to include new players, as not factoring in any rating for unrated players could discourage the use of new players to the federation. Provisionally rated players are not unrated and are expected to play under their provisional rating. FIDE rated, non-USCF rated players would also not be unrated.

Also its “once-rated, always rated” for players who may be playing after a long absence.

New scholastic players can play under an assigned rating of 600 or they can play on bottom boards and not have ratings figured into the team average. (In past years most scholastic teams were far under the rating limit and therefore this should suffice in most cases.)

Boards 3 and 4 must be within 1,000 rating points. This rule is to prevent seriously “stacked” teams.)