Gary L. Walters is a candidate for the EB in the upcoming Special Election. What is his USCF id# 12617923 or 12434391?
Seeing as the 126 number from OH is good through 2013 (with activity this year) and the 124 number from TX had its membership lapse in 1990 (with no activity in MSA), I’d guess that the 126 number is the one.
Further checking shows that the 126 number was the one used to post his candidacy in the USCF Issues forum.
As of 1990, the 124 number had a rating of 1790. Starting in 1994, the 126 number had provisional ratings in the high 1700’s (pretty high for new player unless he’s an import from overseas) and the first established rating was 1840. So if they’re both his rating history, it would hardly make a difference to his current rating.
He could have been at the Army Command and General Staff College in Texas at the time.
It is about once rated always rated. Why issue a new number if it is the same person?
The USCF wouldn’t (knowingly) do that now, but in that time frame, it wasn’t unusual for players who had been inactive for some time. Personally, I had sent in memberships with old ids, ratings, and last rating supplement appearance and saw the rating report come back with a new id and unrated. Apparently, the USCF had at times cleansed their database of inactive players and did not have a way of re-entering them.
Correct, until around 2005 the USCF had no way to re-activate an ID that had been purged.
We no longer purge any IDs, we just flag them as duplicate, deceased or inactive, but there are quite a few IDs issued between 1977 and some time around 1990 that we no longer have any computerized records for. And of course someone who was a former member dating back to before the IDs were assigned in around 1977 was probably never issued a USCF ID at all.
(For the most part, if an ID starts with 1252 or higher, we probably have it in our records. (I’m not sure about all the 2X numbers, though.)
How do I go about obtaining the magnifying glass concession for USCF? 
Tim, I’ll let you have the magnifying glasses if I can have the bludgeons. Less quality but even more quantity!
In my own case, I went inactive from 1976 to 2009 - and moved (several times, in fact) - now in a different state than where I was in high school. And my name is neither extreme of greatly unusual or very common, but common enough that several people in the USCF have it (not including middle name). When I told my new club my middle name and former state and timeframe, the USCF somehow found it! I was amazed. I was all set to start again as Unrated, then get a provisional… but USCF preferred to give me my old identity. (It’s not a 1252+ id, but instead a ‘100x’, which I enjoy having - the lowest number in my club!) So I didn’t mind having the old ID - amazingly, the rating was pretty close to what I’ve been playing (to my occasional frustration, trying to move up). So I am 99% sure the USCF got it right, and indeed found/reactivated my original membership from the 70s.
Not sure why I went on about it, except to offer my “kudos” (transl. for younger set: “props”) to the USCF administrators and system creators/maintainers for being able to do that, just a few months back… pulling records from the early/mid-70s.
Does anyone know anything about Gary L. Walters? I ask a few Players in Texas and have yet to find anyone who knows him. Just wondering.
The right thing was done for TPGriffin. We talk about retaining scholastic players and once rated, always rated. Gary Walters was an outstanding high school chess player that served our country at many posts. How was his membership allowed to lapse for so long? Where was the Scholastic Director, the broadest “area” of USCF’s responsibility and the Military Chess Committee? Before Sam Sloan tells us the records were dumped in a landfill lets find out the facts.
Allowed?? We can’t FORCE someone to pay dues, can we?
Reminds me of the revolutionary conversation:
A) “Come the revolution everybody will eat steak.”
B) “But I don’t like steak.”
A) “Come the revolution everybody will eat steak and like it!”
Pardon my failing memory, but who is TPGriffin and what ‘right thing’ are you referring to?
see his post above.
I still don’t see where ‘allowed to lapse’ comes in. Memberships lapse because members choose to let them lapse.
Or were you referring to the deletion of lapsed memberships in the past?
The USCF, for reasons that were probably valid at the time, purged quite a few computer records back in the 80’s and 80’s, mostly to save disk space at a time when disk space was quite expensive. (I recall paying $7000 for a 300 MB disk drive around 1990, and disks were even more expensive in the 80’s.)
They didn’t save computer readable backup copies of those records, either. (Even if they had, sometimes reading those old disks or tapes is difficult, assuming they are still readable at all. Has anyone seen a working 8" floppy drive lately?) The absence of those historical records has been very frustrating to people trying to do research on USCF data, including me.
We don’t purge lapsed member records any more, but sometimes it is challenging to figure out what the old ID, rating and floor for a returning member are, and it takes the USCF staff some time to do the research and update the database, all of which has to be done BEFORE the event is submitted to be rated, or else the office has even more work to do to flag yet another duplicate ID and get all the other records in sync. (The ability to rate events quickly has downsides to it.)
Wouldn’t there be a paper trail from the 60’s and 70’s?
The USCF didn’t always take good care of of its paper records, either. Some of them were thrown away in the early 90’s due to space requirements, including, I’m told, the original ratings cards, which had been microfilmed. Others were put in an unheated trailer behind the USC office, where they deteriorated. Quite a few of those had to be discarded when the offices were moved to TN.
Also, having paper records and being able to do much with them are separate issues.
We do appear to have a number of crosstables from the 80’s.
They’re computer printouts. Scanning those to reconvert them into digital form would be very time-consuming.
Out of curiosity, what records do you have from the 60’s and 70’s?
I did not promise once rated, always rated.
A few clothes and books remain from the 60’s and 70’s It was a period not clearly remembered.
Sorry, serfdom has been abolished.
Probably doing their jobs, which had absolutely nothing to do with with maintaining the rating list.
There is. All the ratings are available in printed rating lists. Those who need them can find them. It sounds like what you’re complaining about is the lack of instant gratification from seeing the information on line. Tough.
If a player rejoins after a lapse, and it’s not made clear to the office that he had an old ID, he’s going to be issued a new one. When it’s discovered, it’s corrected (and the ratings merged, if necessary). This is common knowledge among those who have a need to know, as is the lack detailed or computerized records from the pre-1990 era. The reference to Sam Sloan suggests that you are trying to equate your own ignorance with a conspiracy. Haven’t we seen enough of that already?