I just finished running a tournament, and realized I forgot to collect birthdate information from a player I intended to register. While I try to get in contact with him, is it ok to put a “random” date (in the correct year, from his FIDE page) and have it fixed after we make contact? (The point of this is to get the event submitted as quickly as possible)
If it matters, the player in question is a foreign player that I’m registering under ‘International Online’, with an established FIDE rating.
I don’t know of any reason why his birthdate would matter, as long as it doesn’t affect his eligibility for the type of membership he is being given. (If, e.g., he is trying to sign up for a 2-year Young Adult membership and he was born in 1992, it would be important to know when in the year his birthdate is so that you can determine whether he would be 25 or under when the membership expired.)
It helps US Chess to have accurate birthdate/demographic information, but I would agree that prompt submission gets higher priority. So, IMHO, your suggestion is a good one, especially since the record will at least have the right birth year to start.
Don’t forget to submit the player’s FIDE ID along with the membership.
Thanks all, I’ve done this and will email the office when I make contact with the player. I also discovered that I misinterpreted the international online membership and that it doesn’t apply since the player now has a U.S.-based address, so that part is moot.
Something I’m worried about is that FIDE has available to the office every registered player’s DOB. I’d worry that they’d think this player is different because his DOB doesn’t match what FIDE has.
I’m not sure that’s completely correct. Here is the specification of the FIDE rating report format. There is indeed a field for the player’s date of birth, but it is not marked as required for a rating report. If a value is provided for that field and it disagrees with the date of birth on record for that FIDE ID, a warning will result.
I may be wrong but I think the result of that warning is a kick back to the national federation for resolution. And I could be wrong on that.
Regardless, we need the birthdate - especially for a FIDE rated event.
We need the birthdate for US Chess purposes for 1) membership status qualification 2) ratings list qualification and 3) matching up to make sure we have the correct player.
I don’t doubt your information about what that warning entails.
On the other hand, does this mean that Tracey Vibbert has to fill in the DOB fields in the rating report manually? I believe there is an EB motion to require organizers to submit rating reports for FIDE tournaments in a format that faciliates the office’s preparation of the report or to incur a surcharge. (As I understand it, at the current time, that would require the organizer to submit SwissSys files for the tournament.) I have been producing a monthly database that combines the FIDE rating list (FRL) and the US Chess golden database to make it easier for organizers to submit SwissSys files with FIDE rating, FIDE ID, federation, and title information for the players. Of course, that combined database doesn’t contain birth dates (nor should it).
Naturally, it is not my place to tell the office how to do the job of preparing FIDE rating reports. However, if the DOB field in the rating report is optional, I can’t say I see the value of manually adding it to the rating report. If there is a concern about having the wrong FIDE ID for a player, there is a way to check that. There is already a US Chess ID for each player in the US Chess format rating report. If necessary, the FIDE ID could be checked to ensure it is the one associated with the US Chess ID.
