I started a club relatively recently and am newly affiliated with the USCF. I am confused about the role of the USCF in relation to its affiliates and TDs; I have encounted far too many barriers to what should be a smooth, simple, and idiot-proof process already and I haven’t even started running events! It seems that ideally, the USCF websites would provide clear, step-by-step instructions on things like the proper procedure for signing up new members/renewals and how the affiliate commission works for example. But I’m really frustrated with the lack of organization and intuitiveness in most processes. Why are forms located under “Activities and Interests”? Why do I need THREE separate logins to use the websites (uscf member login, TD login, affiliate login)? When I sign in as a TD, I am told there is no public contact info for me and that I should add some. So I click the link to do so and it says I am not logged in (I assume it wants me to log in as a uscf member and not a TD since it took me away from the TD area). There are more things I could list, but you probably already know what I mean. And I can’t even remember some of the things that were so frustrating along the way. All I know is that it has taken me entirely too long to get even this far. Why can’t the number one goal be simplicity? If the USCF is supposed to promote chess in this country, shouldn’t it remove as many barriers as possible to new affiliations and all the (chess-promoting) processes and activities that go with them? I realize that employees will have prepared answers to the two specific concerns I raised, but again, that really isn’t the point. We all have other things to do with our lives. We can’t spend hours at a time trying to figure out how to perform tasks that should take a couple minutes. We shouldn’t have to search for the right way to get things done–it should be clear. We shouldn’t have to read lengthy instructions to know the right way to do something–the process should be made shorter and simpler.
To start with, the public website (uschess.org) is on a completely separate server from the one that serves TDs and affiliates (secure2.uschess.org). Both members and non-members can create logins to access specific features of that website.
As to the separation between TDs and affiliates, they have separate USCF IDs and pay separate dues. Further, not all TDs are officers of the affiliates they direct for, nor are all club officers certified TDs, some are not even USCF members.
The separation between affiliates and TDs is codified in numerous longstanding USCF rules and policies.
TDs can submit tournaments, affiliates cannot (because the rating report must come from a certified TD.)
Affiliates can submit TLAs, TDs cannot.
As a matter of convenience, TDs are permitted to submit memberships on behalf of the affiliates who have authorized them to do so, otherwise we would have to require that the memberships come from the affiliates, not the TDs.
Changing that relationship, which can get cumbersome, even for the USCF staff, would need Delegate approval and would have financial implications, since the USCF collects around $50,000 a year in affiliate dues.
I agree with the thread title.
me too
glad I’m not alone
Far from it!
If you think that’s bad, try submitting a membership for a foreign player who wants to pay extra to receive Chess Life, who has no USCF ID but who has a FIDE rating. There’s no place on the USCF’s main webstore to submit a membership which includes a player’s FIDE rating for some reason (I guess no new members ever join the USCF who already have FIDE ratings). And the TD Affiliate area, which does have a place to add a new player’s FIDE ID info, does not choose to accept memberships with addresses outside the US, Canada or Mexico (I guess that no one who joins the USCF at a tournament lives outside North America). That means you either have to call the office during business hours and waste about 15 minutes of a staff member’s time, or
-
Submit the membership using the TD/Affiliate area, as a non-member registration using a temporary US address, just to make sure the player’s FIDE rating is included with the player’s non-member, new USCF ID, then
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Go back to the USCF’s online membership webstore and “renew” the new player’s membership, using his newly generated USCF ID (from step 1, above) but this time with his real foreign address. There’s apparently a bug in this process as well, because even if you give the player’s actual email address, you still need to put your own email in for a billing confirmation. This causes the online membership webstore to send you an automatic email confirmation not only of the player’s membership payment, but also of his own personal membership card, complete with his PIN as well. Luckily, the office trusts its certified TDs to safeguard a new member’s PIN
OR
Take up Brian Mottershead’s recommendation and just get rid of the magazine altogether, so you never have to worry about getting an address for a foreign FIDE-rated player (although even that might not work, because you would still need an address to mail him his membership card, unless we dispensed with that needless expense as well).
If you think that’s bad, what about submitting a membership for a player who enters a tournament who says he is “unrated?” Nevertheless, you check the website and you see that there are some players with the same name with expired memberships with old provisional ratings. How to make sure that the “unrated” player is not the same player as one of the aliases with an old rating? You could check his birth date which he submitted with his membership against the birth dates of the players who have old ID numbers, to make sure it’s not the same player—but only in Make Believe USCF, because in Real USCF, the Tournament Directors—ALL THE USCF ‘S TOURNAMENT DIRECTORS—are deemed to be untrustworthy and undeserving of being able to be trusted to look up not only a player’s birth date, but even just a player’s day and month of birth (which would almost always be sufficient to confirm a match or not). At least TDs can be trusted with the members’ PINs, just not their birthdates. If you really luck out, the player might have a FIDE rating, and then you could check the FIDE website for his year-of-birth (which might be good most of the time), because FIDE does not prohibit arbiters, organizers or anyone at all in the whole world from seeing the same details to which “the USCF” (a vague and general “they” in this case) prohibits from allowing its certified TDs access.
Your choice then is to guess that the player is NOT one of the previous members with the same name. If you guess wrong, and he really is that same guy from 20 years ago, then you have to then contact the office during business hours and waste about 15 or more minutes of a staff member’s staff time to merge the old and new IDs, mark one as duplicate and correct the mis-rated results. Or you could guess that he really IS the same guy as the player with the 20-year-old rating. If you guess wrong, and he really is a new player with the same name, then you have to contact the office during business hours and waste about 15 or more minutes of a staff member’s time (if you even get the right staff member on the first attempt), and then create a second ID number for the real new member, transfer the results of the alter ego’s tournament to the new player, and then delete the results from the former member’s records, and correct the results for both players’ ratings.
Could this ever be fixed? I have to believe it could. Although I’m no rocket scientist it really doesn’t sound like rocket science to make these things easier to do, AND THEREFORE MORE LIKELY TO GET DONE.
WILL it ever be fixed? Probably not. I’ve talked several times to various EB members, and the ED, and it’s just not deemed to be worth fixing. If I or any delegate tried to submit an ADM to actually get it fixed, it would just be attacked as micro-management—even though there are times when the office is crying out loud at the top of its lungs for some micromanagement (the good kind, of course, like sending automatic emails to active TDs whose TD certification is about to “expire”). And even if the ADM(s) to fix all this somehow passed, it would probably just be de-prioritized.
That was the long answer. The short answer is that that’s just the way things are-- they’re not going to change, no one is going to make them change, and you just have to modify your own TD and organizer behavior to live with things the way they are and still run your tournaments the best you can. I guess you just look at it as a challenge (and admittedly a relatively small one at that) in the face of adversity to navigate the various obstacles to your goal of a successful tournament. And admittedly, thanks to technology, things are vastly better today than they were 20 years ago-- imagine wading through a stack of a half dozen rating supplements printed in 8-point type to look up the rating and ID number for every player who entered every one of your tournaments!
I don’t have to imagine, I can remember. A half dozen was often on the low side (for a November tournament you checked the October bi-monthly, then the August bi-monthy, then the June semi-annual, then the December annual, then the previous December annual, going back year by year until you reached the 1985 golden-equivalent, so a player in November of 1992 that claimed he hadn’t been active in ten years required either checking ten supplements or just taking the player’s word that his rating hadn’t changed since 1985 - really, truly, honestly, so he actually was just under the top-end cutoff for that significant class prize and you and all of the players in that class could trust unquestioningly that he would never deceive you). Even then, it only showed people that actually had ratings. The new electronic golden lists (available monthly) also include anybody who purchased a membership even if they had not played a rated game (a god-send in a lot of scholastic tournaments with fairly new members), so the only ones missing are those who purchased a membership after the last golden.
You also didn’t mention sending in rating reports and new memberships in a single envelope (eventually the reports were on diskette) and waiting one to three months for the tournament to finally be rated, with it showing up in supplements that wouldn’t be used until a couple of months after that. Playing in a December tournament and finding out in March how it affected your rating for April tournaments was considered by some to be lightning fast. There were times the contents of the envelope would get seperated and the memberships would not be processed for another month or so, which further delayed the rating of the event.
One of the features built in to the new tournament editing form is the ability to enter archival tournaments (ie, ones rated before December 8, 1991) into USCF records.
Tim Tobiason declined to work on it, but we did get a quote from a scanning company to scan all the pre June 1992 rating supplements, it was in the $8000-10,000 range. Scanning just the annual lists would probably cost about half that.
Whether we would be able to convert enough of the scanned data into computer readable form to be worth doing (assuming the project was funded somehow) was not clear. A test using a desktop scanner several years ago had about a 92% error-free conversion rate (meaning there were around 24 players with data errors per page, since a typical printed supplement had around 300 names on a page), but surely OCR technology has improved in recent years? The annual ratings lists from Chess Life prior to the mid 70’s didn’t include USCF IDs, though.
Having them on the website as scanned images would be better than nothing, though it might take up a lot of disk space and be kind of slow (and a bandwidth hog) to use.
Agree completely with the title of this post. Perhaps if USCF would clean up its act, Chess.com wouldn’t be literally beating the pants off you when it comes to providing chess services to its members. They make you guys look silly. Talk about a fool’s mate.
OK, I’ll bite.
USCF governs over-the-board rated chess tournaments and acts as the USA representative to FIDE. Chess.com provides online, informal chess (i.e. not governed by an official chess organization) that happens to have a rating system. Same board game, two very different operating structures and delivery channels.
So what is it you’re complaining about, exactly?
Very simply, the overall utility of the USCF website, which I would grade as fair. You must have missed that part about “providing chess services to its members.” That seemed fairly specific. Yes, they are very different and it is glaringly apparent. It is the difference between trying to serve the chessplayer/member with the best product possible (and try to make a profit doing it), versus the plodding, bureaucratic pace of the USCF, which is focused on some Platonic ideal of chess with a nebulous desire to promote the game in this country. Now I’m not saying that’s bad or that USCF is bad–far from it. I’ve supported it for years and will continue to support it. Bureaucracy does have its place after all. But chessplayers tend to be competitive, and I’d like to see USCF sit down at the board and compete! But I get it–not for profit and all that stuff.
I am assuming the USCF would be responsible for the RULES?!
Where is the latest updated book? (since 2003)
Where is the online version?
Why aren’t the updated rules front and center on the home page instead of under announcements? Last year there were changes made in May 2011.
Who keeps checking under the announcement page for rule changes where no indication is obviously given?
Why aren’t TD’s, especially NTD’s required to be retested? Some don’t know or don’t want know the most basic rules of touch move, triple repetition of position, and time penalties.
Why can’t you get an answer from the USCF when you notice an error in the rule book and want to bring it to attention?
Is the USCF listening to and engaging its members a premium service?
This is a very serious accusation. Of course, you are prepared to support this accusation with evidence? Or to withdraw the accusation?
I have extreme difficulty believing an NTD does not know or is not interested in knowing rule 10 (The Touched Piece) or rule 14C (Triple occurrence of position).
If you have been personally involved in an incident in which an NTD did not correctly apply rule 10 or rule 14C, after appealing the ruling to the chief TD, your correct course of action is to appeal the ruling to the Tournament Director Certification Committee (TDCC). If you successfully make your case that the NTD has demonstrated such incompetence, the TDCC has the authority to impose various sanctions, which may include temporary or permanent reduction in level of certification or requiring retesting.
However, kindly note carefully that the onus is on you to prove your case. The TDCC does not run investigations on behalf of complainants. It evaluates evidence submitted by all parties to the complaint.
The last rulebook was 2005, not 2003 (granted, still a long time ago). Rather than simply going to another edition I’d hope that the USCF addressed the on-line issue.
The on-line version is being pursued, but there are contractual difficulties with the publisher (NOT the author) that currently prevent it (otherwise Tim Just could simply have his updated soft copy posted).
Retesting is currently required (for all levels) if a TDs USCF membership has lasped for too long a period of time.
Testing is required for any TD level upgrade being sought.
Testing is required, even after a test has already been passed, if the TD has not met the minimum activity requirement for the TD level (granted that level is zero for NTDs, but if they aren’t directing anyway then you wouldn’t see a problem).
2003 is the correct year for the 5th edition of the USCF rulebook.
In general, rule changes have to be approved by the Delegates, who meet each August, and rule changes usually take effect on January 1st. For the most recent changes, an updated file was posted around the end of September with an ‘Effective January 2012’ watermark on it, but the 2011 rules remained the ‘current rules update’ document until January 2012.
Phil Smith was doing some re-formatting of the rules changes document last spring, which is why there was an updated file posted in May of 2011, but there were no rule changes that took effect at that time.
Oops.
2005 was the Supernationals in which I pointed out, to a number of NTDs, the new 18G1 rule (which was cited for multiple games - all of which completed normally once the players realized the rule existed).
Major rules overhauls sometimes take a while to reach everybody. The incremental rules changes go through more quickly.
Touch Move Rule - I am pasting a previous post with this exception. The TD in charge of this section was not a Senior TD as noted but another NTD.
Triple Repetition of Position and Time Penalty - from a previous post
I am curious why Mr. Chong thinks that an IA outranks an NTD. There are a great many IAs who are not even club TDs. Also, Mr. Chong should be reminded that an NTD is not functioning as a TD when he is playing his game. He has exactly as much authority as you do to make rulings. In the second case, I would have complained to the USCF, as Mr. Ballou has suggested above, but that’s just me.
Alex Relyea
In the Touch Move Rule example given - I was not personally involved. I was just a direct witness who also happened to ask for the ruling the next day. It would be up to the opponent involved in this case to bring it the attention of the USCF. I am merely stating what I observed.
Also, Mr. Relyea needs to be reminded about the NTD-player that made the statement about the rule. The NTD-director upheld that statement by not immediately saying it was wrong. Therefore, the NTD-player made the ruling himself.
(not interested in knowing the rule(s))
In the Triple Repetition of Position and Time Penalty example given - I was directly involved, but no need to bring it to the attention of the USCF as I was able to resolve it then and there.
(not knowing the rule(s))
I’m sorry. I thought I understood from the story above that the TD in question was a senior TD, not an NTD. Note that that is bad enough, however I believe that Mr. Chong is missing the point. Mr. Chong is not a TD himself, so it is just barely possible that he doesn’t know that there are players out there who will (try to) bully a TD to get a favorable ruling. Unfortunately, it sometimes works. It has been my experience that high rated (titled) players are worse at this than high level TDs, but I digress. In any event, it is not at all uncommon to see spectators do this, especially parents of scholastic age kids. I still maintain, however, that the NTD had no special rights, and has the “right” to make up whatever rule he wishes as long as his opponent or the TD doesn’t call him on it. It is unfortunate that the TD allowed himself to be bullied.
Alex Relyea