Ever since I worked for the USCF in the late '90s I have felt that US Chess had or should have the right to publish their specific rules on-line regardless of the publishing contract. This is compounded by the normal rule changes process that makes the rule book more and more difficult to use as each edition gets out of date. I favor the Federation selling the book rights as long as we have the right to publish on-line for free a document similar to the FIDE Arbiters manual. It might be nice to have chapters 2 & 4 included but they change relatively less frequently so Ch. 1 would be sufficient for me. I would like to see the USCF sumarize what the current contract states, whether or not they asked about being able to post an updated Ch. 1 on line and any rights and restrictions on a new rule book. To me, having the fully correct set of rules from Ch 1 overrides any financial benefit from a book contract.
Regards, Ernie
I’m working on an ADM . . .
Alex Relyea
The round robin pairing tables are online already. rrpair.htm
I guess we live in a society which for some reason expects everything for free. I would be wiling to bet that for a fee the publisher
would be willing to let individuals download the rule book, same as most other publications, say for Kindle reading.
Rob Jones
Edition 6 is already available for Kindle.
I tried to get by with the Kindle edition only, but decided I prefer a hard copy rulebook. So much for saving a few bucks. Still, it’s nice to have the rulebook on my smartphone.
The Kindle edition would add more value if you could download an updated version between editions, perhaps for a much lower fee than the initial Kindle purchase.
I was under the impression that was going to happen. Has it not?
Alex Relyea
Not that I’ve heard or can find. When I go back to the Kindle store, it lists the publication date as 2014.
That’s another disadvantage of the Kindle edition: You can’t print out the rule updates, fold them in half and stuff them in the middle of your Kindle. 
On a smartphone, you can store and open the rule change PDF (and the blitz rules and the scholastic regulations, etc., etc.). Maybe on some of the better Kindles you can do that, too.
I think, though, that many ereaders will allow the import of a PDF - so that one can have the PDF in the same ereader (or in the case of a tablet or computer, ereader software).
The word search feature is very handy on the Kindle edition. However, I agree it is best to have a hard copy also. Easier to scribble notes in the margins…
The above works on the Kindle Fire reader. I would imagine most of the Kindle readers would have the same abilities. So if one wanted to they could add the rule changes via notes.
Without too much searching, a pdf of pretty much anything can be found online (though of questionable copyright legality.)
I do agree though, and I hope that in the future the USCF will make their most current rules easily accessible online in a searchable pdf. I obviously don’t know the details of their publishing contract with random house, but at some point it must expire- we can only hope. With so many other chess specific publishers, not to mention the option of self publishing, there’s no reason for players and directors to be reliant on a third party that charges a fee for access to the rules. It’s worth noting that FIDE does not charge a fee to access their rules (though they obviously charge fees for plenty of other things.)
Perhaps another and easier answer would be to renegotiate the contract to allow for the USCF to have electronic publishing rights- though this would make the contract less valuable to the publisher (who is going to buy the book when it can be viewed online for free?)
Anyway- it’s only a matter of time. Information wants to be free.
Don’t be so sure that it’s only a matter of time. My recollection (and if I’m wrong I trust someone with better information will correct me) is that one of the provisions of this contract (which dates from the 1970s) is that it is to continue in perpetuity. I think that was a fairly common thing back then, when publishing houses had absolute power over those wanting to see their work in print.
– Hal Terrie
This.
If we want our rules reliably published online, we need to adopt the FIDE Laws of Chess.
That would absolutely NOT be a good solution.
Begin rant:
It is misguided to keep trying to bring US Chess rules into closer and closer alignment with FIDE rules. While there have been changes in the FIDE rule set over the years, an unspoken assumption from the time of their beginning has not been explicitly altered: namely, that all participants in FIDE competitions are experienced adult players of at least Master strength. That is the player set those rules were designed for and that guiding philosophy and many associated procedures remain in place to this day. FIDE rules are very precise, rigid and unyielding because they were intended for use with players who were fully aware of and comfortable with such controls.
On the other hand, from the very beginning US Chess rules were designed for players who are 99% amateurs, many of them young and/or inexperienced. The US Chess rulebook is very large and complicated because many situations come up with amateur players (and TDs!) which do not occur with professionals. The size and complexity of the book is a feature, not a bug!
Now that FIDE is trying to expand its reach down into the amateur ranks, I see nothing but trouble ahead for attempts to apply their rule set unaltered to US Chess competitions. I completely disagree with the TDs in this forum and elsewhere who keep advocating this. A typical example is the current discussion in which some are agreeing that bound scorebooks are inappropriate and should be banned in favor of single scoresheets provided by the organizer. Such scorebooks have been in use in the U.S. for what - 75 years? - by amateur players 99.5% of whom just want a neat way to store the records for their hobby and have not the remotest intention of using the previous game scores to cheat.
Fortunately, whenever someone has proposed an ADM to adopt a FIDE rule, the Delegates in their wisdom have either defeated it or retained the previous rule as an allowable alternate. At my tournaments, I always announce that all of these alternate rules will be used.
End rant.
To return to the original topic, I think the only option may be to negotiate with the publisher the right to put the rules online. I am sure there is some price at which they would allow this. It may take time but with US Chess finances improving year by year, there may come a time when we can afford to pay such a price.
(Edited to remove a word to which some took offense.)
– Hal Terrie
Doesn’t the USCF publish updates to the current rule book online already?? After all these changes were not part of the last/currently published rule book.
Larry S. Cohen
Mr. Terrie asserts that the FIDE Laws of Chess are based on an underlying assumption that “all participants in FIDE competitions are experienced adult players of at least Master strength.” He then claims as an example of a rule that does not “work” with amateurs the “ban” on hardcover bound scorebooks. As Mr. Terrie does not offer a citation, I can only assume he is referring to article 8.2 of the FIDE Laws of Chess: “8.2 The scoresheet shall be visible to the arbiter throughout the game.” I find it a curious lapse that the gentleman omits mention of this sentence from rule 15A of the Official Rules of Chess: “The scoresheet shall be visible to the (tournament directors) and the opponent throughout the game.” The lapse is particularly curious insofar as the US Chess rule is more restrictive than the FIDE rule, as it requires the scoresheet to be visible to the opponent as well. Hardcover bound scorebooks are in violation of this rule unless some manner of keeping the scorebook open flat on the table during the game (such as binder clips) is used. (I note that an ADM offered in 2015 to clarify rule 15A so that it would be sufficient for such a scorebook to comply provided it simply remains on the table at all times failed.)
Mr. Terrie asserts that “The size and complexity of the book is a feature, not a bug!” I note with some interest that the third edition of the Official Rules of Chess is 196 pages (plus eleven introductory pages). Here is the table of contents for that edition (with apologies for the poor formatting):
By comparison, in the fourth edition, the first chapter (titled “U. S. Chess Federation’s Official Rules of Chess”) is 74 pages in length. In the sixth edition, that same chapter weighs in at a beefy 110 pages. (The expansion between the fourth and sixth editions is mostly due to the introduction of “TD Tips” in the fifth edition.)
I disagree strongly with Mr. Terrie’s assertion that the size and complexity of the current US Chess rulebook arises from a need to accommodate inexperienced players. I assert instead that the rulebook has grown steadily owing to a desire in some parts to be able to point to an explicit rule in the text for every possible situation that could arise instead of relying on “tournament directors hav[ing] the competence, sound judgment, and absolute objectivity needed to arrive at fair and logical solutions to problems not specifically treated by these rules.” (The astute reader will note this is a direct quote from rule 1A of the Official Rules of Chess.)
Now, I gladly state that a discussion of what parts of the FIDE Laws of Chess might be problematic for amateur players would be useful. I can think of one such provision easily. Article 7.5.b states that a second illegal move results in loss of the game. (This applies to slow time controls, similar to what US Chess would call “regular rated.” Rapid (“quick rated”) and blitz rules are different.) I do imagine that application of article 7.5.b to scholastic games would likely result in many games finishing very quickly. 
If Mr. Terrie wishes to follow up with such a discussion, I would be happy to contribute. I flatter myself by thinking that I am well versed with both sets of rules as a National Tournament Director and International Arbiter.
(Edited to reflect an edit Mr. Terrie made to his original post.)
I didn’t mean to start a debate about the perceived superiority of the US Chess ruleset versus the (correctly) perceived superiority of the FLC.
What I meant to do is to offer a realistic path of least resistance to achieving a rule set published online. Because there is no upside to the publisher to allow us to do so with our current ruleset.
But that’s all. There are about 273 better reasons to adopt the FLC. I don’t view buying a rulebook as an onerous requirement.
Mr. Terrie, perhaps inadvertently, points out another serious problem with our rules. Despite a very thick rulebook, players have no idea what rules will be in force when they register for a tournament, and sometimes not even when they are playing in said tournament. What happens if I play Rh1-f1 and then attempt to hop my king to g1? In Mr. Terrie’s event, I really don’t know. Many (most) experienced TDs don’t follow the letter of the rules anyway, unless 1A comes under that classification. That’s fine and necessary, and why we have a thorough appeals process, but is not a need to preserve the current ghastly system.
Alex Relyea
Here’s a question for people who have seen more than I have: Do you think USCF players are less likely to know their rules than FIDE players because the USCF rules are not freely available online?
Not only that, but also because the rulebook is more than ten times as thick. It is much easier to know 14 pages.
Alex Relyea