I have a friend visiting from the Netherlands next month and he wants to play in a chess tournament while here. He has a FIDE rating but has never played in a USCF event. He prefers not to join USCF for a year since this is likely the only tournament he will play. Is there still an adult tournament membership available? I believe there used to be one for $12 but can’t find anything in Chess Life or on the web site. Alternatively is there some sort of promotional membership available? Thanks in advance!
“Players who are under 25 qualify for the a $7 Junior Tournament Membership, all others qualify for the $12 Adult Tournament Membership. $5 of a $7 Junior TM fee and $10 of a $12 Adult TM fee can be applied towards a USCF membership if purchased within 60 days.”
Thanks!
Try looking in the Frequent Questions page on the TD/Affiliate Support Area.
Should this information also be available on the web site for regular non-TD members? I can imagine some people would tell friends who may be interested in occasional tournaments about it if they knew. Perhaps some of them would eventually join too.
It IS available on the USCF website.
Is it in the ideal place? Possibly not, but suggest a better place.
Lack of proper thought towards the organization of the USCF website has been an ongoing problem. Lack of consensus over what goes where (EVERYBODY wants their #### on the home page) is another.
I fell for this one. My suggestion was going to be, “on the page that shows after you click ‘Tournaments’ from the main menu”.
However, currently there is a combined menu option, “clubs and tourneys”, after clicking that you must click “Upcoming Tourneys”. Then is the pick-a-state screen, which is also has links for “bidding brochure” and “events overdue” (I would move those to the TD/Affiliate area, as the target audience here should be members and non-members interested in playing in a chess tournament). After a state is selected there is the text:
…but following the link to membership information gets confusing as you see several options for donating - including to the legal defense fund - which is not likely to be encouraging for potential members. I didn’t see the adult tournament membership and stopped looking at this point.
I would split the menu item “Clubs and Tourneys” Into “Chess Clubs” and “Chess Tournaments”. Clicking on “Chess Tournaments” would display the select-a-state screen, but above the list of states there would be a portion of the page dedicated to informing the uninitiated tournament player. This would include the text about “open to all USCF members” as well as the tournament membership (“You may purchase a single-tournament membership for $12. You will be able to play in a tournament and will receive an official USCF rating, and if you decide to play in more tournaments then $10 of the fee may be applied towards a full USCF membership, if purchased within 60 days.”)
However, my suggestions run into another point of Mike’s: lack of consensus
Perhaps it isn’t obvious, but it makes very little sense to sell a tournament membership on the USCF webstore, because we wouldn’t know what tournament it applies to.
Moreover, how would the tournament director verify that the non-member has a valid (eg, not yet used) tournament membership he or she can use in this event? Remember, TDs are cautioned in the rulebook to either verify that someone is a current member or collect dues from that individual. (See pages 100-101.)
The most logical place to sell a tournament membership is at a tournament, with the $7 or $12 paid along with the entry fee to the organizer/TD, who then includes it as part of the ratings fee for the event.
Good point, the text should direct the player to pay at the tournament. The intent of my post was an attempt to suggest where on the website the information might belong, and I think that Mike’s improved text would be a good fit there.
I’m not sure I understand the reference to ‘open to all USCF members’, because it’s pretty clear that many tournaments are NOT open to all USCF members.
Also, there are some tournaments that will NOT allow simply a tournament membership to participate.
TMs may not be used in national events (EB mandate), but for all other events it is strictly the organizer’s choice as to whether or not to deal with TMs.
^
Or processing memberships at all, for that matter. (i.e. a tournament that simply requires one already is a valid member at tournament registration time and refuses entry if current membership can’t be proven.) I have yet to see such a tournament, and every tournament I’ve directed I have had a live Internet connection onsite.
But it would be theoretically possible.
But I’m curious… Why aren’t TMs allowed at national events?
I can’t answer for the Executive Board, which created that policy, but I suspect it may have something to do with the feeling that someone competing for a USCF national championship title should be a USCF member for longer than just the duration of the tournament.
I don’t know, but why should that stop me from guessing? 
For the organizer and/or tournament directors, tournament memberships are a PITA in any largish quantity. If the player does not have a USCF ID number, you need to do a non-member registration as though you were submitting a membership. Then, you have to submit the rating report for validation and deal with the validation errors by checking the box to include the $7 or $12 tournament membership fee in the rating fee. Doing this for one or two tournament memberships is tolerable. Imagine doing this for a Supernational (5000+ players), where you could have, say, a hundred tournament memberships to deal with.
The web store module for handling registration for national tournaments predates the reintroduction of tournament memberships. I’d guess that the software checks for a USCF ID number for anyone registering and also checks that the USCF membership is valid for the tournament, directing the individual to the membership area of the web store if not. (Well, at least that’s how I would hope it would work.) To handle tournament memberships, this code would have to be modified to allow the player to complete a non-member registration to be issued a USCF ID. Then, presumably, the software would also have to offer the option of collecting the $7 or $12 for the tournament membership.
Since the player would not have a USCF expiration date in the future, this makes the process of generating “problem lists” of expired memberships (that might get through during on-site registration, for instance) more difficult.
In the end, it doesn’t seem worth the hassle. Playing in a national tournament such as the scholastic nationals or the U.S. Open is an expensive proposition. The entry fees are substantially more than the cost of one year USCF membership, not to mention the cost of the hotel.
Of course, USCF also benefits more from a full year’s dues than the tournament membership fee. But I would still think the main reason is logistics.
(Mike Nolan posted his answer while I was writing this. I’ll just say “what he said, too”. 
)
But there’s probably nothing which prevents the organizer/TD of a national event from submitting them anyway, though.
Why should it be necessary to write code to prevent that? Are there that many organizers of national events who believe that USCF rules and policies exist for the sole purpose of being ignored?
Those are really good points - both the notion of national titles being awarded to… members… and also the logistics aspect. I found it painful enough doing 3 youth TMs and 1 regular scholastic membership yesterday / having to get new USCF IDs for the 3 TMs. 3 checkboxes for TMs were plenty - I think I had 7 TMs at the last non-JTP scholastic I did, let alone upwards of 100, 50, or even 20.
But the only easier way I think it could be done is if there was a singular one-checkbox in a section for “add Tournament Membership for all flagged players,” or somesuch. Then just let the TD be responsible sure about the count of TMs.
Having done 99 TMs for a single event last month, I didn’t think that the double-validation and 99 checkmarks needed were anywhere near the size of the task of getting the information for the hundred or so new non-member IDs (some of which were used for JTP players in the K-3 sections) and then submitting them. By the time the double validation was done, I was looking at maybe spending an extra 15-20 minutes on the tournament submission (it was a thirteen section event plus an extra games section for cross-sectional pairings of players with byes - for a single section event I think 10 minutes would have sufficed).
The organizer spent a number of man-hours gathering the information and getting them into an uploadable spreadsheet (the first event I did a membership upload for - the instructions were pretty good and it worked the first time). I spent a total of maybe 30 minutes doing the uploads, validations and printing the non-member cards. I’m not sure exactly how long the back room staff then spent entering those IDs against the players.
It would have been easier if, up front, all of the player had had USCF IDs (even expired USCF IDs, as then a membership batch upload would not have been needed). If the entire effort had been limited to simply the 99 checkmarks then it wouldn’t have been that bad.