Corporate Charity Championships: Chess Rulebook

The following rulebook extends and alters the general CEA guidelines.

Season Overview

Main Chess website: cea.gg/chess
Registration: https://cea.gg/spring2024
Roster Submission: https://forms.gle/7SaKfCb7EgoxowKL6
Fair Play Waiver: https://forms.gle/4FUi9ihCrLuVgs3T6

Spring 2024 Season Schedule
- Start of Registration: Sunday, March 17, 2024
- End of Registration:
  - Regular Registration End: Tuesday, April 23, 2024
  - Late Registration End (increased EF by $40): Tuesday, April 30, 2024
- Pre-Season Match: Apr 27, 2024 (system test match for teams – no standings implications)
- Regular Season:
  - Match 1: May 4, 2024
  - Match 2: May 11, 2024
  - Match 3:May 18, 2024

– no matches during Memorial Day weekend –

- Match 4: Jun 1, 2024
- Match 5: Jun 8, 2024

- Post-Season:
  - Week 1: Jun 15, 2024
  - Week 2: Jun 22, 2024
  - Semi-Finals:Jun 29, 2024
    – no matches during the 4th of July weekend –

Finals & 3rd Place Matches: Jul 13, 2024

Rulebook Overview

Player Eligibility: Extending on the general player eligibility for CEA participants:
1. Corporate: A player on a corporate team playing in a CEA tournament has to be employed by the company for the full duration of the tournament and must be able to authenticate this via a corporate email address. Temporary workers, contractors, or interns are eligible to play as long as the previous conditions are met. Leaving the company mid season voids a players eligibility to play and can no longer be added to a team’s roster.
2. All players participating in the CEA Chess competitions must have a chess.com account in good standing.
3. All players participating in the CEA Chess competition must be in good standing with FIDE and their national chess federation.
4. All players must have signed the CEA fair-play waiver before starting the tournament.
Player Rating: Each participating player must reveal their chess.com login (blitz rating required), as well as FIDE Player ID, national Player ID (e.g. USCF(US)), and lichess login if available.
The tournament rating is a player’s chess.com rating. All other provided ratings will be translated into chess.com ratings (see Rating Conversion table in VIII). If a player’s translated rating differs substantially from the player’s chess.com rating, the tournament direction might substitute the given translated rating as a player’s tournament rating.
Team Roster: A team may start the season with 4-10 participants. Rules for qualifications for rostered members can be found in CEA general rules.
1. After the beginning of Regular Season play (Week 1 matches), a player rostered on a team may not transfer to another roster within the same company for the same game without the Game Lead’s approval.
  - The main circumstance permitting a transfer would be a team losing players and falling below the minimum team size.
  - Companies with multiple teams playing the same game may have players on multiple rosters as outlined in the general rules under “Team Eligibility.” Being a floater is not considered transferring.
2. After Week 5, removing players from the roster does not free up additional spots.
Player Substitution Rule: A player on a team is allowed to substitute onto a different team of the same university / company under the restriction that a player can only substitute onto teams that have a higher team average than the player themself.
Roster Order: A team’s roster order is determined by the players’ tournament rating starting with the strongest player and in descending order.
Weekly Structure:
1. Sunday (for Swiss tournaments and playoffs): Matchups for the week are released (assuming all previous match results have been reported). Pairings for Round Robin sections are published before the start of the tournament.
2. Mid-week: Match lineups for both teams are made public and locked as soon as both teams submit them.
3. Saturday:
  Corporate matches are played starting at 10am Pacific Time
Match Rescheduling: Team captains of opposing teams may independently coordinate a different match time after matchups are published to accommodate the players. Note that the default time is heavily preferred and captains should be looking to field alternate players if their players cannot make the default time. Reschedules must be mutually agreeable. If there is no agreement, all matches will be played at the default time. Failure to show up for a scheduled match will result in an automatic loss and a warning. Sunday 6pm Pacific time (30 hours following the traditional start time) is the deadline for rescheduled matches to be completed for Swiss sections and Playoffs. The Sunday, 6pm Pacific time, of the last round of Round Robin sections is the last date to reschedule matches in Round Robin sections.
A reschedule announcement must come along with the time lineup announcement of both teams. See General Rules in the handbook for rescheduling rules and post in the #reschedule-reporting channel if a reschedule is agreed upon. Forfeits will be reported to the #forfeit-reporting channel in the CEA Discord server by the team captain.
Match reporting: It is the obligation of the winning player to submit the result of a game immediately after a game has been played. If a game ends in a draw, the white playing player has to submit the result.
Prizes: This is a tournament benefitting charity. 100% of registration fees and additional donations go towards a donation pool with the top 3 teams per bracket deciding to which non-profit they want to support. CEA will make the donation in the name of the teams after the completion of the tournament. 60% of the donation pool is allocated to the charity of the first placing team, 30% to the second placing team, 10% to the third placing team. The donation pool allocation towards brackets follows a similar pattern (e.g. Top bracket 60%, second bracket 30%, third bracket 10%).

Tournament Format

Season Format: The league is structured in a Regular-Season and Post-Season and spans 9 weeks

Regular-Season: 5 weeks of ‘Swiss-Sys’ during which teams face opponents of equal win/loss ratio. Standings are based on Match points followed by game points as first tiebreak.
Post-Season: Depending on the number of registered teams, teams will be broken up into playoff brackets of 8 teams during which teams will play a double elimination schedule. The seeding of teams is based on the final regular season standings.

Team Average Rating: A team’s average rating is determined by the average individual tournament ratings of the top four players. Substitutes do not count towards a team’s average rating.
Time Control:
- Time control for each game for each player is 10min + 2 sec increment per move
Point System / Tiebreaks
- A match between two team consists for 16 games played (see III. Match Rules)
- Each win of a game will give the winning team 1 board point.
- A draw of a game will give both teams ½ board points.
- Once all games are played, the team with the larger amount of board points will receive 2 match point. In the case of teams achieving a tied board score during their match, both teams will receive 1 match point.
- For standings, the following tiebreak order is used:
  1. Match points
  2. Board points
  3. Buchholz
  4. Avg. team rating
If a company fields multiple teams, intercompany matches are avoided as much as possible for the first 3 rounds but not guaranteed.

Match Format

Roster submission: Team captains are required to submit a match roster of 4 players participating in the match by Thursday 8pm Pacific Time.
Match format: A match between two teams is run in the Scheveningen system in which every player of one team players every player of the opposing team.
For Team A and Team B with each players 1-4 this results in following games in which the first named player will receive the white pieces:
Round 1: B4-A1 B3-A2 A3-B2 A4-B1
Round 2: A1-B3 A2-B4 B1-A3 B2-A4
Round 3: B2-A1 B1-A2 A3-B4 A4-B3
Round 4: A1-B1 A2-B2 B3-A3 B4-A4
The player with the white pieces is required to send their opponent a challenge (see VI.3 Match Challenge).
A team has a 15 min grace period from the scheduled match time to arrive for a match. If a team does not arrive within this grace period, the match will be counted as forfeited and the offending team will receive a warning.
Players are given a minimum break of 2 minutes and a maximum break of 5 minutes between games.

Rating Conversion

Lichess		USCF		FIDE
lichess > 2400	chess.com = lichess	USCF < 1000	chess.com = USCF+100	FIDE < 1500	chess.com = FIDE-100
lichess > 2200	chess.com = lichess – 100	USCF < 1350	chess.com = USCF+50	FIDE < 1800	chess.com = FIDE
lichess > 1800	chess.com = lichess – 200	USCF < 1750	chess.com = USCF	FIDE < 2000	chess.com = FIDE +60
lichess < 1800	chess.com = lichess – 300	USCF < 2000	chess.com = USCF+50	FIDE > 2000	chess.com = FIDE +100
		USCF > 2000	chess.com = USCF+100