If an expired USCF tournament director continues to run official tournaments after having lost his certification, what can the USCF do about it? What recourse, if any, do players or parents at that event have if it does not get rated?
I ask because it is not easy for the average member to know when a director’s membership expired or, worse, had his license suspended. If that person has established a reputation over years, then how are players and parents supposed to know that he or she no longer is allowed to run USCF rated events? In fact, even a complaint to the TDCC would be pretty much useless if the director is not a current USCF member.
Unfortunately, this is not a hypothetic question. However, I don’t want to present more details until I have additional information.
Out of curiosity, are the tournaments advertised as chess tournaments, rated chess tournaments or USCF-rated chess tournaments? Are they advertised in Chess Life or on the USCF on-line tournament listing?
If they are listed as USCF-rated chess tournaments and/or advertised in the USCF magazine/web-site then the affiliate may end up getting in trouble.
If not then the director has semi-plausible deniability in saying that it was not listed as a USCF-rated tournament (either non-rated or rated in a non-USCF method). If that director has been running exclusively USCF-rated events then that semi-plausibility gets pretty thin.
In our area the K-8 tournaments are usually USCF-rated, so even organizers that exclusively run non-USCF-rated events usually state that in their flyers. The HS tournaments are rated by the state HS-coaches association only, not the USCF, so they usually don’t bother explicitly saying that.
Since the event is rated, AND submitted, I assume the TD submitting the event into the system on behalf of an affiliate must be a certified TD, otherwise the system would presumably not allow him/her to submit the event for rating. In that case, the certified TD can be reported for posible sanction if he/she was not really running the tournament but rather was allowing an uncertified TD to run it.
If the event is not submitted, then certainly the participants should be able to have entry fees rescinded. I don’t know what the USCF can do to sanction the noncertified TD, but most chess communities are fairly small and regular and certainly word could be spread amongst schools and local chess organizations to ensure that people find out the individual is uncertified. Any legal action is probably not worth the cost and trouble. In extreme cases the USCF might consider posting official notices or advertisements in the local area.
The tournament was NOT advertised in Chess Life or otherwise. The entry form cleverly stated that USCF membership was required but did NOT explicitly say that it would be USCF rated. The annual event with often over 100 players and a history of 10+ years has been rated many times before, but as far as I can tell, not in 2006 and (so far) not in 2007.
I am now concerned that the organizer, who is a former but not current USCF member, might never submit the event. (I already checked the tournament received list.)
Texas has something called the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Treble damages and attorney fees if the plaintiff wins. I suspect other states have a similar tool (which could be used in small claims court). I would always discourage litigation (and did in my prior posting above), but…
seek redress from the sponsoring affiliate. I’d start by asking for my money back.
That’s why events must be sponsored by affiliates. The TD can, perhaps be further sanctioned - but the primary recourse is a complaint against the affiliate. One possible outcome might be that the Affiliate membership (and thus the right to run USCF events) might get yanked.
seek redress from the sponsoring affiliate. I’d start by asking for my money back.
That’s why events must be sponsored by affiliates. The TD can, perhaps be further sanctioned - but the primary recourse is a complaint against the affiliate. One possible outcome might be that the Affiliate membership (and thus the right to run USCF events) might get yanked.
I think you are SOL. If no advertising said “USCF Rated”, then you don’t really have any expectation that it will be USCF Rated. ESPECIALLY if last year’s event was not USCF rated.
Was any USCF Affiliate mentioned in the advertising?
As I read it - so far we have a non-USCF member acting as “organizer” of an event which requires USCF membership. That’s a bit unusual (and I’d check to see if any USCF memberships sold at the event were actually submitted - by who, I wonder???) Perhaps the organizer did not sell memberships, but required players to already be USCF members? If memberships were sold, players should have receipts showing the name and USCF ID of the Affiliate and the Officer of that Affiliate who sold the membership.
But, if the advertising doesn’t SAY “USCF Rated”, it’s hard to see a problem when it turns out that the event is not USCF Rated.
Yes, I realize that the players in this tournament might be SOL. The fact that USCF membership was required but nowhere did the flyer promise USCF rated was extremely deceptive advertisement.
Fortunately, I am not one of those who attended. I know a few players personally although they live in another state. I also know the organizer and the circumstances surrounding his departure from the USCF. Apparently that’s something that the players were unaware of–they blindly assumed a tournament with a 10+ year history of drawing 100+ players would be a quality event. Of course, being USCF rated is a big part of a quality event for many people.
As for the affiliate, it also expired a few months ago and has not been renewed. Mind you, the owner of the affiliate was the director himself.
That raises the broader questions: Whose job is it to notify potential players that a certain person should not be directing tournaments? The USCF? The states? Local clubs? What if he’s not a USCF current member? What if his membership and/or TD license was suspended by the USCF?
I understand your concerns, but at root what we have here is a non-USCF event. It’s certainly not the job of anyone in USCF to maintain or advertise a list of all people who are NOT certified to direct non-USCF events.
But, this website offers the ability to look up individuals and affiliates and determine whether or not their membership is up-to-date and whether or not they are currently certified TDs. I just took a WAG and looked up a likely suspect, and the database tells me that his TD certification expired in 1993.
It seems to me that this is sufficient notice to the public.
I largely agree with Kenneth Sloan here. My dog can direct a chess tournament, if it wants to, and if people will come. He can even charge entry fees and give away large prizes, and as far as I can tell anyone who comes and plays has no expectation of it being rated. It seems a little strange that the tournament required USCF membership if it wasn’t a USCF rated tournament, but I don’t see that that is anyone’s business other than the USCF.
Wasn’t there a heavily promoted tournament called the U.S. Open a few months ago that was played for pizza coupons and not USCF rated? What did the USCF do about that?
TDs must be current members and currently certified TDs and the submitting affiliate must be current in order to submit events online. (And as of earlier this week, we are now checking ALL of the TDs listed for the event, and all must be current active TDs.)
For events mailed to the USCF office, the office can override a ‘lapsed TD’ or ‘lapsed affiliate’ error, I think this is handled on a case-by-case basis.
One of the problems (IMHO) with USCF policy (and hence with the printed rating report form) is that the sponsoring affiliate does not need to sign off on the rating report. The TD has to sign the printed report, but there’s no place for an officer of the affiliate to sign it, and thus no way for the office to know if the affiliate even has any knowledge that this event was held, much less sanctioned it being rated.
We have had problems in the past with TDs ‘borrowing’ some affiliate’s ID and submitting events using that affiliate’s ID, which is why the process of having the affiliate authorize which TDs may submit events online under that affiliate ID was created, torturous though it may be to some TDs and affiliates just getting started with online submission.
BTW, 85% of the events we rate are now being submitted online.
TLAs do not necessarily list the sponsoring affiliate. Some organizers have the entries sent to the affiliate, others have it sent to the person handling entries, who may or may not be the chief TD.
If 100 people go to this two years in a row and expect it to get rated, and it doesn’t get rated, do you think they’ll go the third year? To an extent, the members will enforce it themselves if they wanted it to be rated.
And if all 100 of them go the third year, they must not care whether it’s rated, and they apparently have no issue either with the TD or how the tournament is run.
There are plenty of groups who willingly opt out of the USCF rating pool, either sometimes or all the time.
I disagree. What we have is an event that has been USCF rated in the past and whose flyer deceptively shows that it is still USCF sanctioned by requiring USCF membership to play. The organizer has in the recent past run major USCF events, but is no longer eligible to do so. Only people with additional knowledge, like those of us writing in this thread, might know enough to see the red flags.
For the record, this tournament was NOT held in California.
I am going to wait for another week to see if the tournament gets submitted via the snail mail route (it was held in early November). If not, I will at least let the USCF staff know about the situation. I doubt they can do anything except alert the big wigs in the state to beware in the future.
I’m not sure what the USCF can do if the tournament doesn’t explicitly say ‘USCF rated’, though if it says ‘USCF membership required’ and people paid USCF dues at the event, then those dues payments better get sent to the USCF office.
There are often individuals who assist, to varying degrees, with many aspects of helping to run a tournament. As long as the Chief TD, Assistant Chief TD, and Section Chief TD are OK, why can't the Assistant Section Chief receive credit for helping out at the tournament, if they are not certified TDs? Maybe it doesn't matter if the assistants don't care about receiving credit for the future (although they might not know at the current time that they would benefit in the future by having the TD credit).
I just today received Bill Goichberg’s mailer for the North American Open in Las Vegas. Nowhere does it say that the tournament is USCF rated. It does say “USCF membership is required” and that the Open Section is FIDE rated. Like most people, I have always assumed that the tournament will be USCF rated since USCF memberships are needed.
Should I be concerned if the NAO advertisement doesn’t explicitly say it is USCF rated? Is there even a rule saying that all Grand Prix tournaments must be USCF rated?
Suffice it to say, the people who attended the tournament in this thread assumed it would be USCF rated. I have my doubts, increasing every day. By the way, two people have now PM’ed me with correct guesses for the tournament and organizer name.
I’m not quite sure where the USCF comes in to this. If the scofflaw is not a certified TD or an affiliate, there’s not much the USCF can do to him. The players in the tournament could complain that they were misled by deceptive advertising (or even “defrauded,” though that seems pretty strong), but I don’t know how far they’d get in court. The USCF would have standing only if they could claim that their reputation (their “brand”) had been damaged by the action. Frankly, I think the players should treat this as a learning experience, like buying a gold watch from a street vendor and having the gold paint come off in the rain.
The director is not a “street vendor” but rather someone well known to the USCF who has run USCF rated events within the past 2 years. He has in the past organized major national tournaments. The USCF office is also well aware of why this person is not a current member. Now that he is still running events, requiring USCF memberships and giving the overall impression that it will be USCF rated, but not submitting a rating report, the office has at least a moral obligation to inform people in the state to beware.
Of course, as someone else noted, the organizer won’t continue to get 100+ players if he fails to submit the rating reports. However, the person’s reputation was strong enough in the recent past that one unsubmitted event was not enough to tarnish it. Hopefully two is enough, or else we’ll have to wait for number three next year.
Mr. Hillery, I am actually surprised that you haven’t guessed the identity of the mystery organizer.