I played in high school and had a USCF rating around 1200 when I stopped in ~1981. I rejoined USCF 2 months ago and was given a new USCF number as unrated (phone calls to USCF were not succesful in finding me in the archives). Now I have a 1396 (P9) from 2 tournments in Aug but still unrated by the current (Sept) supplement.
I arrived tonight at an out of state 9-section class tournement only to find out TD will only allow me to play in Unrated (playing for first time) or Open section (rating >2000). I would rather taking my lumps in the Open section than risk a weekend of playing kids learning how to move the pieces. Any suggestions?
Once rated, always rated! Unfortunately, you are raising the issue now, just as you register in an event tonight and the TD may not be able to verify your information. If you had an old issue of Chess Life & Review, that TD could have something to go by.
As soon as you returned to action, last month, you should have asked the TD of that event to check for you. Better yet, you should have contacted the USCF before the event. Of course, it is too late for “should haves.”
In any event, based on your post here, I have sent an email to Walter Brown at the USCF office. He will get this corrected for you, but it could take a few days. Mike Nolan, who often posts here, may also take some action.
My wife does call me a pack rat, but I am sure I wont be able to find an old mag with rating label.
I did discuss with TD of my first tournement in July/Aug. At the time, the significance of 28+ year old rating versus starting fresh as unrated didnt seem to be important.
And I dont mind playing up this weekend. Its just seems Unrated vs Open are extreme choices.
I appreciate your quick response.
thanks
Clark Brown
recent USCF 14238164
old USCF would have been given in TN late 70’s
1982 Annual Rating List
Brown, Clark 11430457 7/83 TN 1868
(The 1986 multi-year cumulative list, has this info but IN as the state.)
I don’t see any other possibilities - but I’ve never had anyone remember a lower rating than they had. Normally they remember 100 points above their highest performance rating! (For example, see RGCP and “almost an IM with a 2450 rating”.)
If that 1868 rating is your (thanks for looking for it, Tom, I don’t have a full set of paper supplements here), I can add it to your tournament record, which would pick it up with next Tuesday’s rerate, but the October Rating List was created a week ago, so there’s a limit to what we can do immediately. We can also put a note on your MSA record, which TDs would see if they looked online.
(I also don’t know who you spoke to in the office, but if they were looking for a much lower rating they might have skipped by that one.)
I don’t know what event you’re trying to play in this weekend, and it’s pretty much up to the organizer to set his or her own policy for players that appear to be unrated. But the organizer might be willing to let you play with that 1868 rating, which might be better than the choice of unrated or open.
Thanks for searching… but yes, that’s not me. (I dont think I would forget rating >1800. But I like that goal…). But even playing in the U 2000 would seem more reasonable. Could you cross-ref to home city (Signal Mountain, TN)? I doubt I continued membership past 1982. My guess was I joined in 1977 or 1978.
The supplements don’t have city, just state. We don’t have detailed membership records from back that far, either, because the USCF didn’t keep copies of those computer files and back in the 80’s they would purge lapsed members after a couple of years to save on disk space (at a time when disk space was expensive.) :sigh:
I checked back to my December 1978 Chess Life annual ratings list and the only Clark Brown I found had the same ID as above but was rated 1268/12. The same Clark Brown in the January 1980 annual list (list is for 1979) is rated 1328. The annual supplement for 1980 has the same Clark Brown at 1678. By the 1981 annual supplement the same Clark Brown is 1891. In fact the only Clark Brown listed in all those years is the same one with the id above, all from TN.
All in all it looks like the Clark Brown that is posting here will need his old Chess Life label to prove to the TD that he can play in some other section other than the current two he can choose from.
There is no way to check whether the label he shows the TD is current, is there? If someone has an old rating of 2000 in 1970 and it declined to 1700 in 1980, he can show the 1970 label and be rated 2000.
This Clark Brown may very well be the Clark Brown previously found with a roughly 1200 rating in the late '70s. He may not necessarily be the same Clark Brown who used that ID and improved its rating to the 1800s. There have been cases in the past where the same name (and sometimes even same state) of two different people ended up in a single ID.
For the longest time in Illinois (pairing card days!) we had two Tony Browns. Same spelling, … We mixed up things a lot. We had quite a chore when they both entered the same event (pairings, postings, keeping their won-loss score accurate, …). Yep, you guessed it, their ratings were almost the same also.
(For example, see RGCP and “almost an IM with a 2450 rating”.)