The EB has approved a change in the Tournament Membership program.
Adults will be able to purchase a TM for $12, $10 of which will be applicable towards a one-year or longer adult membership (including senior, sustaining, etc) if applied within 60 days.
Young players (under 25) will be able to purchase a TM for $7, $5 of which will be applicable towards a one-year or longer scholastic, youth or young adult membership if applied within 60 days.
I don’t believe the Board specified an effective date, I think it will take me a few weeks to make the changes in the website interface to handle applying the credits, so I expect this should be available some time around the end of September.
The $20 TM will no longer be needed because the $12 and $5 rates will apply to any event regardless of the rating system or number of rounds.
(Obviously, national events will not be able to use TMs.)
Maybe if you are thinking adults. But it is not uncommon to have players show up for their first tournament ever at a national scholastic. That is why all those have unrated sections with quite a few players in them. I had 90+ in the unrated section at the national HS championship. My son’s second tournament ever was a national JH that happened to be in our town when he was a 3rd grader.
I agree with RGrove – this may be a legitimate policy decision, but it’s far from obvious. 2) Are you including all “national tournaments” not run directly by the USCF? There are still a number of them (like the USATs), despite the ground-salting efforts of the least few years. 3) How do you plan to code it for enforcement? Are you going to hand-code all “national tournaments” so the the TM option on the rating upload will be grayed out?
I’m really referring only to events where the USCF is the organizer and registrations are handled through the USCF’s online registration webstore, such as the 5 national scholastic events, the US Open, and the Senior Open.
Mike did you really mean to say $12 and $7 dollar rates . . .?
I think the whole concept seems reasonable. Last month I had a player that had let his USCF expire because he knew family obligations were going to prevent him from playing. But last month he was able to play and it coincided with a rated tournament so the one tournment membership worked out great.
I need a clarification. I’ve had local players argue that if they were only going to play in two tournaments a year that it’s cheaper to buy two tournament memberships in year than to buy one fult boat yearly USCF membership.
Can players buy more than one tournament membership in a given time frame? Or is a tournament membership a one time purchase and if so, how would it be monitored?
I would guess that there is no limit on tournament memberships that can be bought, but there is a 60-day limit on applying some of the tournament membership to a membership upgrade. An interesting question would be whether multiple tournament memberships within that 60-day limit could be used for a membership upgrade before another tournament.
No, while there are no limits on the number of times someone can use a TM (one person has used it 5 times), only one $5 or $10 credit can be applied towards a full-year or longer USCF membership. (This is no change from the TM program as approved by the Board in late 2005.)
Sorry not to clarify earlier, but I’ve been traveling. I absolutely did not mean to imply that such a policy was unreasonable (although if that is the policy, it probably should be articulated somewhere). What I meant was that it was not obvious that there is in fact some prohibition on using a TM to play in a “national event”. And incidently, I did not make that post until after an extensive search of the website, in which I was able to find very little in the way of description of the Tournament Membership and how it worked. I’m not saying that a good description is not on the website somewhere and that if I had been able to find it, every part of you assertion might be obvious. But I sure couldn’t figure it out on my own, which is to me the epitome of obvious.
I will be running my first tournament this weekend and had a question about the Tournament Membership. I see that Mike states the program will be changing around the end of Sept. but don’t want to wait that long to turn in the results. what is the current TM program?
Hi Mike,
This is very welcome news. Thanks to the delegates who worked on this and the EB members for passing it. Is there a link to the new procedures? My first scholastic tournament is in November and I would hope to print the new procedures to give to the tournament membership participants.
Thanks again!
Hank Anzis
Scholastic Director
Iowa State Chess Association
Actually, it was the Board’s initiative that brought back the tournament membership, after what seemed like months of discussions between myself, Bill Hall and Bill Goichberg.
The Board also approved the latest set of changes at their Thursday meeting during the US Open (ie, before the Delegates Meeting.)
The latest changes (changing the adult rates from $10/$20 to $12 and adding a $7 rate for kids) should be available somewhere around the end of September when the rewritten TD/Affiliate Support Area is ready.
After consultation with the Executive Director, we have implemented the first portion of the revised Tournament Membership program passed by the Board in August, as follows:
The new $7 Junior TM is now available for tournaments submitted through the TD/Affiliate Support Area or for events mailed to Crossville. The $7 rate may be used by any player who is 24 or younger as of the starting date of the event.
Starting on December 1st the adult TM fee will change to $12 in accordance with EB Motion 07-115. (This gives organizers and TDs a few months to plan accordingly. December 1st is also the date that the ratings fees will go up.)
Through November 30th, the fee for adult Tournament Memberships will still be $10 or $20 based on the event.
(To simplify matters, the $20 option will be discontinued on December 1st, the $12 adult TM rate will apply to all events regardless of the number of rounds or rating system.)
The revisions to the TD/Affiliate Support Area and the membership webstore to facilitate applying TM fees to memberships should be available around the end of September, as previously mentioned.