I directed a tournament Jan 8-9 that had a player play in it who hadn’t played in a USCF tournament since (his estimate) 1981-1982. He wasn’t in the Golden Database as I could tell and he wasn’t showing up in MSA. Last Thursday I sent a ‘Contact Us’ message to USCF asking if they could look up his old ID. On Tuesday I left a voicemail with USCF asking how long an inquiry like that takes to get serviced and left my phone number and email address. No response still.
Hopefully someone on here has some insight into what’s involved in these kinds of inquiries.
Depending upon how far back the member’s rating was last published, they may have to look on the microfilm of the old ratings cards or go through the printed ratings supplements, or possibly do both.
I don’t know exactly what order they search through the printed supplements, I’d probably start in the early 1990’s and work backwards, possibly all the way back to the 1970’s.
That’s why it helps to have some idea of when the person last played as well as what name he was using at the time and where he lived.
I’ve done the supplement search process myself many times at tournaments I’ve directed, though my collection of supplements doesn’t go back as far as that. It’s not very exciting work, and for the office staff it’s just one of many on-demand tasks they’re asked to do. (I think the person who primarly takes care of that task only works 20 hours/week.)
I’m hoping that we can reorganize the office workflow when the USCF office moves to Tennesee starting next month. The first challenge is going to get ANYTHING done during the transition period.
Unfortunately, there is no single source for pre-MSA ratings, and there won’t be one any time soon. There was a large cumulative rating list issued in 1987. From 1987 to 1990, you have to check the annual lists one at a time. Some, but not all, of these are included in the “Golden Database” – looks to me like players were included if their memberships were still current when it was generated, so you have a number of lifers who stopped playing thirty years ago. Earlier yet (1960s to early 70s), the only source is the old issues of Chess Life.
As for your practical question – frankly, you are going to get an answer a lot faster by finding a TD who has kept his set of rating lists. If your dates are correct, he ought to be in the 1987 Cumulative. The USCF just doesn’t have the time or staff to answer questions like this, though the physical resources are there … somewhere.
Computer dinosaurs like me still remember when computer disk drives had rather limited capacity and were very expensive.
Back in those days (before the early 1990’s), disk space was the most important resource. (A new disk drive could cost $25,000 and might only hold 5 megabytes!)
Because space was at such a premium, the USCF had to purge the computer files every few years to keep from running out of space. One of those purges was in late 1986, and someone at the USCF office had the bright idea of making the 1986 annual ratings list a multi-year cumulative supplement containing all of the rated USCF members that were on the USCF 's computer records at the time, including the ones that were about to be purged.
TDs who have that supplement and the ones since then can generally find most players who played from about 1983 on.
Of the roughly 141,000 players listed in the 1986 Annual, somewhere around a third of them were then purged and the USCF has no computerized record for them, and isn’t likely to ever have one.
There are probably another 50,000-100,000 former members from the beginnings of the USCF rating system in the 1950’s through the end of 1982 that we don’t have computerized records for, either.
We do have computer records on over 600,000 current and former members. I think we have virtually every USCF ID that was assigned from somewhere around 1988 on.
Yeah, a lot of unexpected things happened with that huge 1987 supplement.
I tried to look up the player being asked about here (yes, I do have supplements that go back to the late 70s) in that huge bookfrom 1987. He was not there; however, he did appear in the 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1983 supplements with a final expiration date of 6/83. I would guess here that since he had been inactive from about the middle of 1983 his records did not make that great 1987 life saver.
On a related topic, I had a player for a tournament that I will be running shortly contact me about the tournament. He said that he had been a member back in 1974, but not since.
I asked him to send me his information, and he did as well as a check for $36. I tried to renew his membership online just now, but the computer said that it couldn’t find him (no big surprise if he expired over 30 years ago) and also that he was ineligible for the new/returning rate. Why would this be? Will someone check for his number manually, or should I submit him as a new member? I’m understandably reluctant to do this.
If anyone has records that go that far back, I’d appreciate them sharing with me. Thanks a lot.
Tom Martinak was able to give me this player’s ID number, but the USCF computer said that he wasn’t found. Will someone automatically look for this, or is there something that I can do to expidite the process?
If the membership lapsed before about 1986, the odds are very good that it has been purged from the USCF’s computer records.
The USCF office can reactivate an old ID.
There are two ways to do this.
If you have collected membership dues for this person and he played in your tournament, you can submit a membership exception request form after you have uploaded the tournament detail. (This would be an ‘Office Action’ request.)
Otherwise, you need to contact the USCF office and have them reactivate the membership ID and rating. Send the information to Walter Brown, wbrown@uschess.org
In either case, please provide as much information as possible about the former member so that the office can verify his ID and rating.