Changes to how title norms are determined

Friday, March 24, 2017: Starting 1 April 2017, title norm computations will change...

Changes to how title norms are determined

(24/3/17) - There will be a change in how title norm thresholds are determined starting 1 April 2017.  This change reflects Congress approval of last year's proposals 2016-015 and 2016-016. 

    Which title events are affected?

• Any International Title Tournament with an official start date of April 1st 2017 or later will use the new system of norms.  This date refers to the date a tournament officially starts, not any earlier date when the event was put on the server.  
• Any International Title Tournament officially started before April 2017 will continue to use the old norm system unchanged.

How will norms now be determined?

• Instead of one list of norms that are the same for every participant in the tournament, each participant will have her/his own list of norms.
• These "individual participant" norms are based on the sum of the winning expectancies against all opponents in that event.
• Players should be aware that the new norms will tend to be the same, but may change the score needed to earn a title norm as compared to what has been the case. The requirements concerning the rating performances for titles have remained unchanged; e.g., a norm for the IM title still requires a rating performance of elo 2.450 or for a CCM norm elo 2.300.
• Despite the fact that norms may differ among the players (quite typically by no more than 1 category) due to differences in the average ratings of their opponents, it will be considered proper for a Tournament Organizer to continue to advertise a title norm event as expecting to be a "category # event", where # is the category number of the event as a whole.  Tournament Organizers cannot know ahead of time what each player's individual norms will be when in the process of advertising an event, and have been told not to guess. 
• The new norm calculations will already take into consideration all newer rules including a new formula (based in 2016-015), the new minimum for average opponent ratings according to 2016-016, the 35% cutoff rule, and a new overscoring formula.*
• The overall event category will be found at the top of the cross table and in the start list email.  Additionally, the cross table of an international title tournament will have additional columns which show the norms for each participant.

Will there ever be recalculations of an event's norms once the event has started?

• The category and norms of a tournament are recalculated in the following cases:
  • When a player is withdrawn and all her/his games are cancelled.
  • When a player is replaced in an individual event.
  • When a player is replaced in a team event.
  • When a player's start rating is edited.
• The category and norms are not recalculated when substituting in a team event (in keeping with existing rules).

 *  Please see the 1 April 2017 version of Tournament Rules, Appendix 2 if you want to know more details.

Dennis Doren, Rules Commissioner