There had been a link on the USCF web page that allowed you to produce a ranking of players in a state by rating, is it gone? Years ago Ken Sloan also produced a list chess rankings by state code, but he stopped several years ago. Thanks
I stopped, because USCF finally entered the 19th century, and started to do this themselves.
There’s an updated version of the State Top Players form available at:
main.uschess.org/datapage/top-players.php
This version includes the ability to select players based on being current USCF members, recent ratings activity (within the last year) or all members in the state.
I will be updating this form again to permit selecting either Northern California or Southern California, but first I have to update the information in the MSA database. (It currently doesn’t know which players are CA-N and which are CA-S. That update may take me several days to complete.)
Thanks, Nolan. I suggest that you add a link to this page from the “Players & Ratings” menu. I like the new option to limit the list to players who are active.
That’s not so easy to determine, since the Delegates (foolishly in my opinion) changed the border from ZIP code to county of residence.
The county of each post office serving a 5-digit zip is available and is accurate for the vast majority of individuals. And when you get the 9-digit zip, the county for that particular address is available, so any mistakes can be corrected.
I can only build the pages, I don’t have the ability to link them into the menu. I think the other pages I’ve built (JGP standings, MAP standings and FIDE-related data) haven’t been linked into the menu structure yet, either. I’ve sent a reminder note to the web team on that.
Neither county lines nor ZIP codes are a really ‘clean’ system, since ZIP codes can change and the only way we can determine someone’s county is by looking it up on our ZIP code file anyway. (The USCF gets a quarterly file of ZIP code data which includes things like county information and latitude/longitude for some point in the center of that ZIP code, which is what we use when determining distance between ZIP codes, such as in our TLA Mail Service.)
Moreover, there are ZIP codes that cover more than one county, because the USPS didn’t build the ZIP code system with external uses of it in mind.
Richard Koepcke came up with a list of ZIP codes in 2006 that we have built into a function in the database to determine if someone is CA-N or CA-S. As I understand it, this mapping was approved by both state chapters.
ZIP codes between 90000 and 93199 are all CA-S.
ZIP codes between 93200 and 93599 are a mixture of CA-S and CA-N. (Only a few of these ZIP codes have any USCF members living in them.)
ZIP codes between 93600 and 96199 are all CA-N.
An exaggeration. It was approved by the two or three people whop were present at the Delegates meeting. No one else much cared. You are correct, however, that relatively few live in the border areas.
The new ‘Top Players’ web page (main.uschess.org/datapage/top-players.php) has now been updated to permit the selection all players in California or just those in Northern California or Southern California, since those are considered separate states for USCF governance purposes.