I am complaining about the tournament announcement MISSOURI CLASS (200806293591),
which conflicted with MISSOURI CLASS CHAMPIONSHIP (200806293581). Although I am complaining late, it was thought that most people would go to the official tournament. The first tournament was designed to damage the MO Chess Association, and to some extent it worked as 32 people went to it and 49 people went to the official tournament. It damaged the official tournament and its members by reducing the prize fund, and reducing the chance of a needed discount on the hotel rates - not to mention that the titles carry less meaning with many players absent from the official tournament.
I do not understand this lack of control on the part of the USCF. What is the point of a recognized state association that awards titles if the USCF won’t protect this concept? A lot of people have worked very hard to make the Missouri Chess Association worthy of awarding state titles, and this undermined the efforts of the MCA. Since damages have been suffered I request the USCF remove the affiliate status of the offending party.
Since the USCF had to approve both tournament names, I think it would be ridiculous to remove the affiliate status of the affiliate. While some people may have stayed away and gone to the “renegade” event, it’s been my experience that when the state chapter affiliate has lost the perception of legitimacy among the residents of the state, it keeps many players away from competing in state championships sanctioned by what many consider an illegitimate body. This happens when both tournaments are on the same day or when they are several months apart. I’m not sure how to resolve this type of situation, though.
Alex Relyea
I’m afraid you’ve undercut your whole argument with your second sentence (“Although I am complaining late …”). There is a USCF policy barring the use of “state title” names in TLAs without the State Chapter’s approval. There is a very good chance that the USCF would have pulled the TLA if you had complained in advance. You consented by silence, so I don’t quite see how you can object now.
Others complained prior to the event,and I agreed with that, so there was no consent in silence. Rather than “undercutting” my complaint, I am adding support to it. Moreover, there is certainly nothing wrong with letting the USCF know my feelings on this subject. This should be a concern to all state associations. Why did the USCF not check before publishing the tournaments? How can the USCF prevent this from happening again? Perhaps if the state titles were known in advance with an event code? Then the USCF could check to see if a particular event code was assigned, and prevent duplicate submissions?
As far as I know there is no definitive list of what state championship titles are currently being awarded by the USCF’s 52 state chapters, much less which events they are awarded at.
We’re working on setting things up so that state chapters can use the TD/Affiliate Support Area to enter lists of their state champions for an expansion of the USCF Yearbook that we’re thinking of calling the ‘American Chess Almanac and Gallery of Champions.’, but that won’t deal with upcoming events, only ones that have already been held. (Clubs would be able to submit lists of their club champions as well.)
To make matters more complicated, it is not unusual for the state chapter to have another affiliate run some (or possible all) of their state championships events. For example, I think Bill Goichberg’s CCA affiliate has run the NY State Championship for quite a few years.
One of the ideas I suggested a while back is to add a ‘State Championship Event’ tag line to print TLAs like the tag lines that American Classic and Heritage Events get. Approval for that is still pending.
For a state championship event that is not being organized by the state chapter, this would require approval of the state chapter, but assuming state chapters are willing to respond to email about those events I think we can (mostly) automate that process as part of the TLA Tracking System that we are now using. (This new tracking system has already made it possible for affiliates to pay for their print TLAs online.)
- Did you ask the USCF to pull the TLA? If not, I don’t think you have a legitimate gripe. 2) What do you mean by “prevent this from happening again”? The USCF can pull (or decline to accept) a TLA using a “state title” name if the Sate Chapter objects. If the State Chapter does not raise the issue, how is the USCF supposed to know that the tournament is unauthorized? In many states, all or most championship tournaments are bid out. 3) As Mike has pointed out, there is no standard list of “state championships.” You’d have to flag everything with the name of the state or the word “championship” in it – which is neither practical nor desirable.
From a board member of the MCA:
We made every reasonable attempt to prevent the USCF from allowing his TLA to say “state title” on it, but they choose not to act. We are planning some stronger actions to avoid a similar problem during the MO Open, which Ken also plans to duplicate.
Ok, you don’t seem to understand what I wrote. To do this with the least hassle, create a new category table containing category codes, add a foreign key to the new table in the tournaments table to disallow duplicates. Then you add a little check box on your web page to indicate a title event. Voila! This is simple, practicable and desirable.
I guess I don’t understand it either.
I don’t understand what the category codes would be or how they would accomplish anything.
Is there an official definition of “state title name”? Presumably, the use of the word “championship” in the title would meet the definition, but having the name of the state in the title probably would not. If that’s true, then there’s nothing about the title “Missouri Class” that would make it a state title name.
These situations are better handled through mediation than by making and enforcing rules. Mediation takes time, but it works better in the long run, as it eventually did in Oklahoma.
Bill Smythe
It’s a borderline case, but since the tournaments were on the same weekend, I’d say it ought to have been considered a conflict. I’d like to hear from someone in the office as to whether the state chapter really did bring this up, and if so how they dealt with it.
There appear to be two separate issues in this thread. 1. What, if any, punitive actions can be taken against a TD who deliberately attempts a hostile takeover of State Championships, and 2. How does the USCF enforce the integrity of State titles?
Mediation is fine if the parties want to mediate! They don’t, and it seems they would rather fight each other until the other resigns. Meanwhile, the Chess players are caught in the middle. I would want some penalty applied to those that disrupt the State tournaments, but if the USCF has not defined anything and prefers to let nature take her course, then it seems we will forever have these ridiculous battles between groups like this.
Assigning a computer key to a tournament, with a category such as State Championship, would accomplish the prevention of more than one tournament with this category. That category would then cause the computer to apply a special visual identifier that indicates Official State Championship. So regardless of the text describing the tournament, whether it contains the word “State” or not, is irrelevant as the USCF has indicated the official tournament.
Of course this still does not prevent the mistake that the wrong tournament is tagged as official, but it does prevent two tournaments from being tagged as “official” simultaneously. But in the case of the wrong tournament being identified as official, a correction is possible as we have no ambiguity that a specific tournament is indeed official, the problem is is it correct?
Applying a not-so hypothetical situation, given two tournaments are going to be labeled Missouri Championship, for starters only one can be official in the solution I suggest. What’s nasty about the Missouri case is that the renegade TD is a board member of the state association. If his tournament is posted first, then how is his tournament not the official tournament? In this case the board needs to vote, I assume. A statement from the majority of the board, signed, should be delivered to the USCF to rectify the matter. It sounds like the USCF has not addressed this situation? We are not the only state that has had such petty goings on. I can understand the USCF does not want to get involved, and the whole issue dismissed with “parties better to go to mediation”, but they are not, and we are going on into years of this.
The solution I recommend is a slight modification to your system.
- Define state titles, if they are already, great
- Create a key table in your database to apply to the state titles.
- Apply these keys (codes) to the tournament announcement so no two tournaments can be for the same title.
- Stick a star or flag, some visual indicator that designates the announcement as official
Thanks for taking the time to listen. I am just a player caught in the middle and have no stake in which side wins. But, we the players, are hurt by these divisions, and the USCF can do more in this area.
I still don’t see how coding the event name or type would help in any meaningful way.
Having the word ‘championship’ in an event name does not always means it is a state championship event.
Of the 4096 events rated so far in 2008, 348 have the word ‘Championship’ or ‘Champ’ in the event name as shown on MSA. Not all of those are state championship events, in fact I suspect most are not. Some are city or club championships, others like ‘MEMORIAL SENIOR CHAMPIONSHIP’ are vague.
There are also events that award state titles that do not have the word ‘championship’ in the event name.
Moreover, event names in and of themselves are not protected. Recently an event was run in Wisconsin called the "Northeastern Open’. There has been an event in Nebraska for many years called the "Midwest Open’. There are events in other states with very similar if not identical names.
If I wanted to run a tournament in Omaha this weekend called the “World Open”, the USCF couldn’t stop me from doing that and legally has NO AUTHORITY to refuse a TLA under that event name from me or anyone else. (If Bill Goichberg has trademarked the name ‘World Open’ then he might have some legal ground to stand on, but I don’t know if something as vague as ‘World Open’ could even be trademarked.)
Yes, the USCF may need to take additional steps to try to help state chapters preserve their right to control which events award official state championship titles.
However, if two affiliates want to fight with each other by scheduling competing events, even ones with similar or identical names, at the same time, there is very little the USCF can do to stop them. The USCF is not a police force.
On the contrary, if I’ve been running a tournament for years and someone else decides to use the same name or a name so similar to my name to be intentionally misleading, the USCF would have no right to allow another organizer to use the same name in its own magazine advertising. Beore you go inviting organizers to use tournament names which are the same as those established previously by other organizers and thereby cause the members to be confused and intentionally misled, there is also a Chess Life policy regarding names of tournaments used by organizers in previous years. Chess Life has the authority to run or not to run a TLA if the editor deems the TLA to be misleading.
Don’t get hung up on the codes themselves. The point is that the USCF should control special tournaments to ensure the integrity of the titles. Using computers makes this a snap! The codes are just a way for the computers to track the events.
It’s only a snap if you can explain your concept in a straight-forward fashion, which you have been unable to do to the USCF’s computer consultant–me!
Steve, unless you have trademarked or otherwise obtained clear legal ownership of your event name, it has no legal protection.
I can think of several recent situations other than the one in Missouri, for example the "World Open’ and the ‘Susan Polgar World Open’. There are two different affiliates running events called the ‘Southern Open’ each year. I also seem to recall Richard Petersen making a big fuss over an event with a name similar to one he was running.
In the case of the Southern Open, it does not appear that players in Florida and Mississippi are getting confused as to which event is which, though. (As recently as 2001 there was an organizer running an event in Minnesota called the ‘Southern Open’, too.)
This could best be handled at the state level. What steps have been taken?
Mr Fee was 1st censored for making false statements on behalf of the Missouri Chess Association Board of Directors last year. By the way he made these false statements while using the USCF to threaten myself and another chessplayer.
Just a few months ago he tried to sign up about 100 “new” members for e-mail accounts. Problem was they had no e-mail adresses! But they sure had adresses where the MCA ballots could be sent. They also had no USCF membership and few had even played in any kind of tournament, adult or scholastic.
In other words they were signed up for one purpose only, to help him vote in himself and others so he could control the Board of Directors thereby doing whatever he pleased. Put simply a hostile takeover.
These “new” members were also on one check from Mr Fee which was post-dated.
The Board held an emergency meeting which Mr Fee and his sidekick refused to attend. The bylaws were changed, and when the check was deposited it was returned “Stop Pay”.
At the meeting the Missouri Chess Association Board also took action banning Mr Fee from election to the Board for the next 2 years. He then started the Kansas City Chess Assoc. and created these “false” tournaments with almost the same name as well as on the same DATE. More about this including inflammatory statements can be found at:
powerpawn.net/kcca.htm
Ron Luther
USCF Original Life Master
Missouri State Champion
The tone of your comment above seems defensive and I apologize if I’ve offended, but we are just trying to prevent our state titles from being ruined, not attack the USCF’s IT department.
I work all day with software developers using Unix Application servers, Oracle, Spring, and am myself a Sun Certified Java developer, Masters in Information Systems, Senior Engineer and Development Lead with over 20 years of experience developing applications like these with Fortune 200 companies, so I know a little about these things. 
The state titles can be recognized using a particular set of titles:
Codes , Titles
1-8 , State Class M, X, A, B, C, D, E, F Champions
9-16 , State Blitz Champions
There are more…
Once this set has been defined they can be applied to tournament announcements in such a fashion that the computer will prevent any one code from being assigned to more than one announcement in any given year. The text describing the tournament will be modified by the USCF system after the code assigned and will clearly indicate which tournament is official so as to eliminate confusion. I’d be happy to assist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark# … ark_rights
Last I checked, we don’t live in China-yet! 
While it may be more difficult to defend a trade name without some registration, I think the World Open is quite defensible as it has a clear history of who has used it. Although I’ve only had a year of Law in my Undergrad experience, I know that it is not likely there is no legal protection in a case like this.
Some of the various state championships in IL include:
Open
Class
Rapid
High school Team
Grade school Team
Team
Women
Junior
Amateur
High School Individual
Grade School Individual
Invitational
The grade school organization actually has four splits: K-1, 2-3, 4-5 and 6-8
The high school organization also has a frosh (freshman/sophomore) title
There have also been G/60, G/30, G/5 and I think there have been G/10 and G/15.
In the past the IL tour had seperate awards for non-Chicagoland portion of the state and for the entire state.
Skipping over class and rapid, there are 10 championships which grows to 14 after the grade splits. Add in the 8 class breaks (plus 1 for a non-class tournament) that were listed and you now have 126 different possibilities (doubling to 252 if you have two regions) which could then be multiplied again by the 6 (or more) time controls I mentioned (we now have a potential for 1512 or more different codes). Use four fields and make one of them a class field (left blank if it is not a class event), a second one a time control field (left blank if it is greater than G/60 or so), and the third one a region field (left blank for an overall championship) and you retain flexibility while limiting the burden.
This is just off the cuff and limited to what I’ve seen in a single state, so I’ve almost certainly missed some possibilities, but as a programmer myself I try to look at the pitfalls of trying to implement a limited solution before thinking things through.
This also ignores any difficulty in adding the logic to an existing system (it’s so much easier when such things are included in the original design and you don’t have to retest the bulk of the system with each of the option combinations before implementing a single “small” change).
I still think an easier way to handle this whole situation is to have a checkbox for organizers to indicate that the event is a state championship event and have that trigger a special ‘tag’ line on the TLA. Trying to parse the text of a TLA (by program or by hand) is going to result in either missing things (which is probably what happened here) or being too strict.
One problem with trying to code the events is that there are literally dozens of titles that states could decide to award, with multiple names for some of them. And that doesn’t get into the issue of titles that cover only part of a state or titles that span multiple states, where additional jurisdictional issues could surface. What affiliate in New York City gets to award the NY City Chess Champion titles?
Perhaps the officers of the state chapters should get in the habit of reviewing the proof pages for upcoming TLAs through the TD/Affiliate Support Area and contacting the office if they see problems with upcoming events in their state. Those proof pages are usually posted by about the 25th of the month before that issue goes to press (which in turn is the month before the cover date of the issue), so the proof pages for the TLAs in the September issue should be available later this month.