Welcome to the new US Chess Member Forums!
If you are not a US Chess member, you will need to join US Chess in order to create a login on this system.
The Forums are intended for discussing chess-related subjects. There are categories for discussing general chess matters (All Things Chess), chess clubs, issues surrounding the running of chess tournaments, and issues specific to the US Chess Federation.
Due to the platform change, some aspects of the Forums have changed. Some of these changes are temporary while we complete the process of integrating the Forums with the rest of the US Chess website. All of the messages from the old Forums (over 350,000!) hav been brought over to the new Forums.
How to access the Forums
The Forums are currently accessible at http://uschess.discourse.group. In order to log into the Forums, you must have an account on our main website, https://www.uschess.org, and you will be redirected there to log in.
All Thing Chess, Chess Clubs and Running Chess Tournaments categories are discussions that are publicly visible to all (including non-members), access to the US Chess Issues category is restricted to current US Chess members who are age 16 or older. Only current members who are age 16 or older may post to the Forums.
If you had posted to the old Forums or registered for access to member-specific features of our website before July of 2020, you should already have a username on the new Forums site, tied to your email address. If this is not the same as your email address on our main site (http://new.uschess.org), you will have contact the Forum staff to request assistance with access. (We can update the email address on your existing username and merge duplicate accounts)
All account management functions (password reset etc.) are now to be done on the main website at http://new.uschess.org
To contact the forum staff for assistance with access, send an email to forums@uschess.org. Please provide your username (if you have one), your US Chess member ID, your birthdate and your current email address.
Accessing the US Chess Issues category and posting to the Forums
Until we complete the integration of the new Forums with your member dashboard, we have no way of verifying your member ID, current membership status and age, all of which are required for access to the Chess Issues category or to post to the Forums.
If you had posted to the Forums in 2022 or 2023, your username should already be set up for accessing the US Chess Issues category and for posting. If not, you will need to request to be added to the ‘Adult Members’ group. To do this, click on ‘More’ in the left-hand sidebar and then click on ‘Groups’ to bring up the list of groups, then click on the ‘Request’ button under ‘US Chess Adult Members’ and fill in the requested information. Please allow one working day for staff to respond to your request.
New Features and Changes
The new Forums package has some differences from the old Forums software, and a number of new features.
There’s a new real-time discussion feature (called Channels) that can facilitate discussions of events while they are happening. (These will only show up on the left-hand sidebar when there is an active real-time discussion in progress.)
There are multiple options to indicate your opinion of a post, including a heart, thumbs up and thumbs down.
User polls are supported.
Links to other social media sites are easier to make.
New topics have a minimum length for the topic header, to help make your topic clear and distinct from other, possibly similar, topics. Posts also have a minimum length, and quoting the previous post in full is discouraged.
There are other features, such as calendaring, that may be utilized in the future, for example to display a calendar of upcoming national and local events.
We hope you will find the new Forums easier to use and more useful, and that they will become an important part of your US Chess membership benefits.