I’m a new member of this forum. I know my questions are a little off-topic for “tournament organization” but I couldn’t find a better place to put it, and it seems many other things here are off-topic as well!
My question is: How can I find out what percentage of the USCF is in a certain rating group? I remember a long time ago seeing a page that had the distributions of rating among uscf members, but I couldn’t find a link on the uscf page.
I’ve also heard that the uscf keeps a list of all the masters. Is this so, and is it published somewhere?
One final question: is there an abbreviation for the Expert title? Or is it even a title? I know NM stands for National Master.
Top Lists, but this is probably not what you wanted. I’m not sure that USCF publishes a list of every master. uschess.org/ratings/top/index.php
I think FIDE considers the Expert a Candidate Master. In the USCF, it is a Class and can be abbreviated X, or EX. I’m not sure that USCF considers this a title. For instance, I don’t believe they hand out Lifetime titles to Experts like they do Masters.
Life time title (?) well if we use a rating floor then someone could claim a life time title. If someone became a official established over-the-board expert, with a rating of 2000 does not grat a title of life time expert: as this expert could have a rating of 2000 - 2099 as their all time high rating; in this case the expert will still have a rating floor of 1800 (class A), as the expert never had a rating over 2099. If this expert did have a rating as their all time high of 2100 - 2199 as a official established over-the-board rating: then the rating floor would be 1900 (class A). If this established over-the-board rating is between 2200 - 2299 (master rating), then the player would have a rating floor of 2000 (expert rating).
For a master to have a master rating for life, the master must have a official established over-the-board rating at or above 2400: as a rating of 2400 - 2499 would have a rating floor of 2200 (master rating).
The player must have a established over-the-board rating, and the official rating must be 1600 or greater to have a official rating floor. The rating floor are for both classical ratings and quick ratings. In my case my classical rating floor is 1400, as my high rating for classical was between 1600 - 1699; my quick rating floor is 1500 as my high rating for quick was between 1700 - 1799. With a rating floor of 1400 and 1500, for the rest of my life the rating floor will never go below as a class C player.
There you go again!!! You might claim a title for yourself, but that doesn’t mean it’s a USCF awarded title.
Rating floors aside, USCF, at one time, awarded the title of Life Master. This, regardless of whether or not they reached a rating high enough to receive a master floor. For example, a player rated 2200, who maintained that rating without ever dropping AND without ever having made it to 2400 for a period of time might have achieved that award. I know several people with the USCF Life Master title. Therefore, a player with a high rating of 2250, for example, who maintained that rating for a period of time, could be awarded the LT Master. Once they achieve that title, they could subsequently drop below 2200, and they would still have the LT Master title. I do not believe they ever did this with the Expert Class.
They were abolished years ago, can still recall the good old days (or the twenty century) when players did go after those norms, well nobody in their right mind did. Can recall on the supplements with “1476/c7 or 1532/C5*, ect.” those were the old (1980’s) days. The problem with the life time titles, they were going to send certificate(s) for players that earn titles for each rating class. Not sure but you had to play something like 300 games to earn a life time certificate at a rating class, and like 500 games for the master title. Just what every USCF member wanted was a certificate, to say they have a certificate of a life time title nice and framed in their bedroom.
Do like the rating floor much better then working to earn a certificate.
This one is fairly complicated. The Life Master title was created around 1980, and was awarded for maintaining a rating above 2200 for 300 games.
In the early 1990s, someone (I won’t name names) got the bright idea of awarding “Category Titles” to everyone. Players received “norms” toward Life Expert, Life Class A Player, and so forth, by scoring above “expectation” in a tournament. They kept the Life Master title, but changed it to the same system, and added “One-Star Life Master,” “Two-Star Life Master,” and numerous others. (Note that all you needed to do to get such a title was to have two unusually good tournaments in your entire career.)
This did not catch on, and after three or four years the USCF decided to abolish it. (For some inexplicable reason, most players were not enthused about winning meaningless titles. “When everybody’s somebody/Then no one’s anybody.”) In theory, all those who had earned them kept their titles, but they are not published and hardly anyone remembers them.
This, however, left the Life Master title. The USCF went back to awarding it on the old basis, but what about those who had “earned” the debased titles? Well, the solution (again I shall not name names) was to re-title the 300-game people “Original Life Masters.” Whether the title enjoys prestige is not for me to say; the only practical benefit it carries is a 2200 floor.
Titles are nice but a title does not pay the bills. The person with a title of USCF mail room clerk makes more money on that title then someone with a title of USCF expert – mail room clerk gets a ‘paycheck’ the expert well have a better change then the others to win a prize at a weekend tournament.
Chess is a game, chess tournaments are a way to have some enjoyment in life. Having to spend for the set, the board, the clock, the bag: just to go to a tournament. Then the hours in study, the amount of books, helps with a the chess game. Just going to a tournament just to chase after rating points, there is more with chess then a rating that can give a title that has little value outside the chess society.
I think the Ratings Committee just did some work on ratings distribution, but I don’t know if they’ve submitted it for posting on the website.
In general, I don’t find much value in a ratings distribution without any additional information such as:
Some idea of the age of the player (or the membership category)
Whether the rating is established or provisional
How active the player is
How useful is it to know that there are over 32,000 current USCF members rated under 1000 unless you also know that only about 1200 of them are regular adult members, that around 300 of those adults have not played a rated game in the last 20 months or that only about 400 of those adult members have an ESTABLISHED rating under 1000?
