The Superior
Grand Prix
A season-long league played one Thursday at a time. Three rated games a night against players near your own strength, points that accumulate for 11 weeks, and titles that a 1200 can win outright.
The format at a glance
- Entry
- $5Per player, per league night. No season fee.
- Games
- ThreeA full round robin inside your four-player Quad.
- Rated
- QuickEvery game is submitted to US Chess for a Quick rating.
- Clocks
- 7:00 PMRounds at 7:00 PM, 8:00 PM, 9:00 PM — or sooner.
Ours, not the national one
This is the Superior Chess Club's own season-long competition. It is not the official US Chess Grand Prix, it awards no official US Chess Grand Prix points, and it has no affiliation with that programme.
That is the point rather than a caveat. The national programme is, in practice, a race between strong players chasing national standings. Ours is 11 Thursdays in one room where an 800 accumulates points on exactly the same terms as a 2000, and where both can finish the season with prize money and a title.
What is official: the games themselves. Every result is submitted to the US Chess Federation and counts toward your Quick rating. The season standings, titles and prizes are the club's own.
A league night
You are placed in a Quad — a group of four players of similar current USCF rating. You play each of the other three once. That is your evening: three games, everyone in your group at roughly your strength, no pairing against someone 600 points above you.
Quads are seeded each week from current ratings, so the group changes as the season and your rating move. All games are Quick-rated — the US Chess rating used for faster time controls, kept separate from your regular rating.
The evening's schedule
- Doors and casual play
- 6:00 PM
- Round one
- 7:00 PM
- Round two
- 8:00 PM
- Round three
- 9:00 PM
- Likely finish
- ~10:00 PM
Rounds start on the hour, or earlier once everyone in a Quad is ready. If you are coming from work, 7:00 PM is the time that matters — and an evening that can run to about ten is worth knowing about before you commit.
What to bring
A chess set and a clock, if you own them. The club has a limited number of each while it gets established, so arriving with your own is genuinely helpful — but we would rather you came without than stayed home.
Scoring
- 1st in your Quad
- 4 SGP
- 2nd
- 3 SGP
- 3rd
- 2 SGP
- 4th
- 1 SGP
Every player scores every week they play. Finishing last in your Quad still earns a Superior Grand Prix point — turning up is worth something, by design. One Quad per night counts toward the season.
Join any week, miss weeks freely
There is no fixed roster and no registration window. Enter in week one or week nine; miss a fortnight for a holiday and come back. Nothing removes you from the league, and late entrants are not playing catch-up against a full attendance record — which is what the Counted Scores rule below is for.
Counted Scores
The least intuitive part of the system, and the part members ask about most. It is one rule doing two jobs.
The rule
Your Counted Scores are two-thirds of the season's league nights, rounded up. That is 8 of 12, 10 of 14, or 11 of 16.
It is the minimum number of nights you must play to be eligible for a cash prize — and only that many of your scores count toward the standings. Your best ones.
This season: 11 league nights, so 8 Counted Scores.
A worked example
Dana plays 9 of the 11 nights and scores 4, 3, 2, 4, 1, 3, 4, 2, 3.
She has more than 8 scores, so she is prize-eligible. Her season total is her best 8: 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2 — 25 SGP. Her weakest night, the 1, is dropped.
Marcus plays only 6 nights and wins every one. He has 24 points and sits high in the table — but he is short of 8 Counted Scores, so he is not eligible for prize money. Consistency is the thing being rewarded.
The Championship
After the regular season the top sixteen in the standings qualify for the Superior Grand Prix Championship — or the top eight if the field is smaller. It is played as Championship Quads: quarterfinals, then semifinals, then a final, with the top two from each Quad advancing.
Two different honors
The Superior Grand Prix Champion is whoever finishes first in the season standings. The Superior Grand Prix Championship Winner is whoever wins the final Championship Quad.
They are separate titles and are frequently held by two different people. The site never treats them as the same thing, and neither should anyone quoting it.
Prizes
Entry is $5 per player per week. Around 50% of all entry fees collected across the season is paid back out as prize money; the remainder covers the club's running costs.
- Season champions
- 41%
- — Gold, Silver, Bronze
- 20 / 13 / 8%
- Class champions
- 45%
- — 9 classes, each
- 5%
- Recognition awards
- 14%
- — 4 awards, each
- 3.5%
The class block is the largest on purpose. Nine class champions at 5% each is what makes a season winnable for a player who will never top the overall standings.
Projected figures move with attendance. Until the final league night has been played the prize pool is an estimate, projected from turnout so far. It goes up and down as the season fills out.
Awards
Per the Rulebook, a season pays out:
- Gold — Superior Grand Prix Champion
- Silver — Runner-up
- Bronze — Third place
- Superior Grand Prix Championship Winner — the playoff
- Class Champions — one for each USCF class
- Most Improved Player — rating at the start of the season against the end
- Highest Win Percentage
- Giant Killer — the largest rating upset between two established players
- Longest Hot Streak — most consecutive top-two finishes in weekly Quads
The recognition awards each require at least the minimum number of Counted Scores.
Eligibility
Cash prizes require an established USCF rating. If you arrive unrated, you establish one after two weeks of Quads — six games — which is the US Chess minimum. You play, and you score, from your first night either way.
A provisional rating is the temporary figure US Chess assigns before you have played enough rated games for it to settle. It is used to seed your Quad, so you are still placed against players near your strength from the start.
You need a current US Chess membership to play rated games. What to sort out before your first rated night