Hello everyone, My name is Timothy Robinson. I am new to USCF, but am a very experienced chess player. I am a little lost on how to begin playing some games so I can build my rating. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
You get a USCF rating only by playing in a USCF-rated over-the-board tournament. Check the tournament listings for more information.
You may also be able to find a website for your state chess association, and for other states in your area. Some state chess websites have more information than USCF.
Bill Smythe
Thank you. I will more than likely be playing in the Statesville Tournament in North Carolina on June 22-24th
Regarding ratings, you should know that our system is different from some others. In the American Contract Bridge League, the rating system consists of “masterpoints” that one simply accumulates by good performances. If the performance happens in an important tournament, you get more masterpoints. And they never go away. As you get older you get more of them. It’s famous for “little old ladies” who are mediocre players but who have accumulated thousands of masterpoints.
Our system is not like that. It’s a running indicator of how you are performing, with more weight on the more recent performances. And the performances are assessed by how you do (win? lose? draw?) and what the rating of the opponent is. So you can “build” your rating with a good performance, but you can “tear down” your rating with a bad one (or being unlucky to have your opponent play unusually well against you.) You’ll get a rating after your first tournament based on your performance there.
It’s the typical system used by chess organizations worldwide. Basically, that’s because they copied ours.