Invitational Rating List Regulations Updated, March 2022

The US Chess Executive Board recently approved changes to the Invitational Rating List Regulations. These rating lists are used to determine the order of invitations for the US Championship, US Women's Championship, US Senior Championship and the USA teams for the Olympiad and World Team events.

Here is a summary of the changes:

• The Zonal years for FIDE World Cup qualification are now the even-numbered years. With the US Championship and US Women's Championship permanently moving to the Fall each year, this change was necessary from a timing perspective due to when the World Cup qualifiers need to be named.
• Various references to the US Senior Open were changed to the John T Irwin National Tournament of Senior State Champions, to reflect that the Irwin Tournament is the senior tournament that qualifies a player to the US Senior Championship.
• The US Senior Championship was added in various places to update the references in terms of qualification for that event.
• The regulations regarding the activity point reduction was updated to reflect that you do not need to play 30 games, but you will have your invitational rating reduced by one point for each game less than 30 you play. The previous regulations could have been interpreted as requiring a player to have played at least 30 games to be included in the list.
• The activity requirement regulations were clarified to include all US Chess regular rated games, including those which are dual rated.
• A new regulation regarding inactivity was added. A player must now have played at least one US Chess regular rated game, or FIDE standard rated game, within the last 10 years to be included in an invitational rating list.
• For the Senior list, only games against players with a US Chess rating of at least 2000 will be counted towards meeting the activity requirement. Previously there was no rating requirement for the US Senior Championship.

Also note that the US Chess Executive Board recently extended their previous motion extending the period used for calculating a player's game count for the invitational rating lists. This means the current period used for determining a player's game count for the invitational rating list activity is from March 1, 2019 to the date each monthly list is produced. This motion is due to expire on December 31, 2022, at which time we will revert to using the previous 12-months of activity for the game count.

For questions relating to these updates or the invitational rating lists, please contact Chris Bird, US Chess FIDE Events Manager at Click here to show email address.