There are a lot of factors to control for, but I looked sections in the last 12 months that drew 20 or more players and had at least 25% of the field in adult membership categories. There were 1562 such sections. In 1228 of those sections (78.6%), 25% or more of the field were in young adult, youth or scholastic membership categories.
Excluding events held in New York state, there were 1326 sections. In 1054 of those sections (79.5%), 25% or more of the field were in young adult, youth or scholastic memberships.
So it looks like maybe New York is not all that different than the rest of the US.
Adult tournaments are becoming extinct in parts of the country. I have played my fair share of five round G/45 events with five opponents under the age of 16. Even the CalChess Labor Day state championship saw 14 of 30 players in the Master section who were age 18 or younger, including 8 of the 12 who finished above 50%.
Maybe now the readers can see why it is important for the USCF to reach out to the internet. This is the one medium that young players are most comfortable in these days. As teens get older, they have more distractions (social life and girls) plus more schoolwork (and less free time to travel to tournaments). Do they quit chess? OTB: yes in many cases; internet blitz: only rarely.
I’ve looked at data from 6-8 years ago and there were quite a few juniors playing in adult events then too. However, with the overall decline in adult membership (down from 33,000 in 1996) and the current crop of highly rated junior players, they’re probably a larger percentage than before, especially on the top boards.
We have a lot of scholastic/junior players in non-scholastic OTB events in our area as well. But the percentage of our active scholastic players who participate in non-scholastic otb events is fairly small. We have fairly regular crowds of 200-300 for scholastic events. A weekly non-scholastic otb event here normally draws around 20 with 5-8 scholastic age players. The Ky Open had around 100 players and maybe 25 were scholastic players. That may be a decent percentage of the Ky Open field, but it is not a large percentage of active scholastic players in Kentucky (I think the largest scholastic event in Ky last year had 368 players for comparison)
And I don’t disagree with anything Polly said at all.
Is declining USCF membership resulting in less of a demand for tournaments, or are fewer and fewer tournaments causing a decline in regular membership?
this sounds like a catch 22. less members would cause a decline in the demand for tournaments. and the fewer tournaments could cause a decline of membership who see less opportunities to play.
Well, I said that there were a lot of factors to control for.
Since the ratings system information doesn’t include age, grade or ratings restrictions information about a section, about the best I can do is look at the players in it and try to classify it based on that. In this case, I limited it to sections with 20 or more players and at least 25% of the players in adult membership categories, in this case senior, both regular and premium adult, sustaining, life and 6 month trial.
I’m not sure what a ‘scholastic’ event is either, is that one with no players older than some age, such as 12, 15 or 18? What if there’s one fill-in game between a young player and an adult?
The above scenario is merely a single snapshot in time. The challenge is not how to get more juniors, but rather how to get more adults over time. Specifically, I believe it is important to retain those juniors who, in a few years, will be adults.
I believe a greater USCF online presence, with rated online blitz play, is a big key to keep these members hooked. You are welcome to disagree with me.
I’m sure of 368 players you drew to that event, probably the majority of them never play in any non-scholastic events. If your sections are broken down anything like ours, your under sections probably have the most number of players. I remember one year when we had the NY State Scholastic Championships in Pleasantville our largest section was the K-6 under 1000. We had 1000+ players in the entire tournament. I believe we had around 200 players in that section.
What I see in the scholastic tournaments that I direct is the majority of those kids do not play any tournament chess outside of scholastic events. A good portion (75-80%) of those scholastic only players do not venture outside the area to attend other scholastic events such as states, nationals or any of the large number of scholastic events in NYC. I would say the majority of those kids stop playing all together once they get to a school with no chess program.
Getting kids to join USCF and play in tournaments is not difficult, getting them to stay members and continue to play is another story. There is a lot of turnover. I don’t see many kids with ratings under 1000 playing outside scholastic events. How many kids who start with 3 digit ratings stay around long enough to see if they improve? I know of two. Igor Schneider and Hikaru Nakamura. Both had ratings in the 700s when they were real young. They have something in common. Older brothers who were very strong players. I’m sure there are others.
There are 417 current USCF members who are under 24 years old and are rated 2000 or above. For 222 of those members, their first published regular rating was under 1000.
We only have supplements in the computer back to early 1992, so I don’t have Joel’s first published rating, but for those that we do have data on, here’s a list of the top 20 current members in order of the gain between their first published rating and their current rating:
[code] name current first_rtg gain
CARUANA, FABIANO 2672 473 1998-08-01 2199
NAKAMURA, HIKARU 2751 684 1995-04-01 2067
ROBSON, RAY S 2484 438 2002-02-01 2046
LUDWIG, DANIEL 2455 448 1997-10-01 2007
LOPEZ, ANGEL 2029 139 2001-06-01 1890
RAMER, SCOTT LEO 2136 291 1996-04-01 1845
BARCLAY, KAYIN 2205 404 1999-04-01 1801
WAGNER, RICHARD 2060 324 1993-06-01 1736
HESS, ROBERT L 2561 836 1999-02-01 1725
FRIEDEL, JOSHUA EDWARD 2576 868 1993-10-01 1708
COUSINS, ROBERT P 2190 483 1995-08-01 1707
YANG, STANLEY 2208 508 2002-02-01 1700
HILTON, JONATHAN LAWRENCE 2227 539 2000-02-01 1688
FOUTS, MATTHEW 2040 369 1996-04-01 1671
ARNOLD, MARC TYLER 2401 739 1999-06-01 1662
SCHNEIDER, IGOR 2426 771 1998-02-01 1655
BARNETT, ALEXANDER 2269 615 1995-10-01 1654
PRESSMAN, LEIF 2175 533 1997-02-01 1642
MILMAN, LEV 2502 865 1997-08-01 1637
DATTA, DEEPYAMAN 2208 579 1998-08-01 1629[/code]
Thanks Mike that was an interesting list. So a little over 1/2 those young adults over 2000 started under 1000. So here is my next question how many of those 222 players ended out with an established rating under 1000 before heading upward? How old were they when they had those 3 digit ratings?
