Is it possible for a teacher and/or parent to be certified to TD scholastic tournaments without being a USCF member? Someone mentioned to me that it was possible however I have been unable to confirm this or find additional information pertaining to it. I ask because I coach an elementary chess club and the administration has asked for some tournaments within the school and with the other three elementary schools in the city. There are a few parents and a couple teachers that have shown interest and would be willing to “manage” these events. However, none of them want to join the USCF just to be a TD at these competitions and it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request. They don’t want to play tournament chess. They only want to teach their children and help them compete and have fun. If this can be accomplished please tell me how to do so. If this is not possible, why not? Seems this would open doors and encourage more parents/teachers/students to enjoy participating in chess.
Why isn’t the USCF rulebook online? Again, it seems to me that this would be the “smart” thing to do.
Having the rulebook online would make it free and easily accessible to all players and tournament directors and anyone else that would like to read it. Most TD’s administer tournaments with the aid of a computer so they could maintain a copy of the rulebook on their computer as well. This would mean no forgotten or lost rulebooks anymore.
Having the rulebook online would make it easier to update when rules are changed or clarified. It would make more sense to make the correction actually in the online rulebook without having the addendums which must be printed and taped/glued/stuck in the paper rulebook. Whenever changes are made then the TD’s would simply and easily download the newest electronin copy.
Having the rulebook available online would save the printing costs of the books and the unnecessary use of paper. This would help the USCF to “go green” and help save earth. :mrgreen:
Thanks for your time and answers to these questions.
When uploading tournaments there is a validation done to make sure that the TDs are current USCF members with valid TD certifications. Thus the answer to your first question is that you cannot officially TD without being a USCF member.
Your second question has been asked multiple times. Unfortunately the USCF has a long-term contract (starting pre-internet) where the publisher has the right to publish the rulebook, and the publisher will NOT permit an on-line version. There have been multiple times that getting out of that contract has been looked at, but it has not yet been feasible.
Certified TDs must be current USCF members. However, you may want to look at our family membership plans, for $70 you can have two parents and their children (up to age 24 if living at home or a full-time college student) as USCF members.
The issue of having the rulebook online has been discussed here in great detail many times. The short answer is that the publisher of the rulebook has no interest in that, and they control those rights.
If your chess parents are willing to do the bulk of the work that doesn’t REQUIRE a TD (taking entries, getting results from the players, posting pairings, etc), there’s no reason they can’t “assist” a certified TD – so you’d only need one TD to handle a moderate-sized event.
I think you’re asking for trouble if you try to run events without an experienced TD, however. Even if your chess parents COULD become a certified TD, without playing and TD experience, they wouldn’t be very good TDs. And big events will need multiple TDs – there’ll just be too many things happening at once for one TD to handle it, even with help from non-TDs.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch – somebody has to pay for all the effort of keeping the rules up to date, preparing TD certification tests, scoring the tests, maintaining records of each TD’s events, etc. Really, $29 a year is pretty reasonable for all the things the USCF does (it’s not like we’re trying to make a profit off of it, after all – all the money goes to supporting chess).
You are posting here with a USCF member number, so you must be a USCF member. You can sign up to be a club TD, and the non-members can help you with registration, scorekeeping, “spotting” players who have questions, crowd control, etc. That could work just fine for a scholastic tournament of up to 50 players.
Just so you are aware, you need two USCF memberships to rate a tournament: the TD needs to be a USCF member and a certified TD (that part is free), and the tournament itself must be rated through a USCF affiliate (which is effectively a club membership).
Alternatively, you can run unrated scholastic tournaments, and use the same rules and pairing methods used in a USCF tournament.
Either way, you are talking about the same batch of people running the tournaments–the only question is do you or don’t you sign them up as USCF members and rate the tournament.
Or, you could hire in another TD or get one to volunteer. Chances are good that an active TD will already be connected with an affiliate through which the tournament can be rated.
Rated or unrated, the quality of the tournament will be determined by who runs it, and how much they know about how to run a good tournament. If you don’t feel like someone in your group knows how to do this well, you’re better off hiring a TD experienced in scholastics, whether you rate the tournament or not. See what I mean?
Keep up the good work. If you’ve got four elementary school chess clubs in your town who want to have a tournament together, you must be doing something right.
One scholastic chess league I know of pays the USCF membership fee for anyone who’ll volunteer to become a certified TD. That takes a little out of your tournament proceeds and/or requires some additional fund raising, but does eliminate one hurdle to getting the volunteers.
The Nebraska State Chess Association used to buy a new TD a rulebook if he or she would agree to work at a few upcoming state events. Some good TDs got their start that way.
