People love dialing toll free numbers (1-866-44-Chess) therefore I get a lot of out of state calls. I received a call from a gentleman in Boston MA who is looking to join a chess club and purchase chess supplies and equipments. I thought a quick club look up on the US Chess site would give me a telephone number and/or address of club to refer him to.
To my surprise, the search by zip code and then by city (Boston) and finally by state resulted in no (zero) clubs being returned.
Is there a problem with the search facility located at: uschess.org/clubs/
I can think of a couple of possibilities and others may be able to think of more.
No organizer in MA has yet entered their club data in the club directory. The organizer has to first set their affiliate up in the TD/Affiliate area and then that information can be maintained.
Something happened in the database to the MA information.
There was a coding error in the state table for MA, it has been fixed.
However while the club directory search page will now list 31 affiliates in the state, including several in the Boston metropolitan area, none of them are located in the city of Boston itself.
Try searching on the first 2 or 3 digits of the zip code.
Unless an affiliate has requested not to be in the club directory, we should have SOMETHING for most affiliates, even if they haven’t filled out their club directory information using the TD/Affiliate Support Area.
Actually most players from Boston are likely to play in the Boylston Chess Club which I believe is listed in Somerville. If the player is willing to travel a bit, as in about 30 minutes, then a larger club would be the Metrowest Chess Club.
That’s Western Mass, pretty far from Boston. (At least by Massachusetts standards; in LA it would be a normal commute.)
The Boylston Club used to be in Boston, but it got pushed out by rising real estate costs. I believe several colleges still have chess clubs, but they are likely to be open only to students.
[b] Unfortunately, the match must be made exactly on the Affiliate Search Page. Perhaps the contact person for the affiliate is in another city or they gave no contact information. Try going to the “state lookup” for clubs and click on MASSACHUSETTS and look for Boston. If then there is no phone number, one might not have been supplied.