Even if I had, I wouldn’t say so. Personalities should be kept out of a general question like this. I agree that, given the facts as you describe, the players ought to be warned, though I’m not sure if this should be done at the national or state level.
Taking a longer view, this is an illustration of why I was always unwilling to pay in a tournament that had not appeared in “Tournament Life.” Without this, there is really no way to hold the organizer responsible.
I think the individual you are not mentioning by name is a USCF life member, but not currently a certified TD.
It does make it tedious to participate in this childish guessing game when the facts are not stated accurately.
Maybe the parents in the area would be better served if people with knowledge of wrongdoing would step forward and speak in plain language, rather than playing games?
I’m still trying to figure out what SPECIFIC action the OP would like SOMEONE ELSE to take. Should USCF take out an ad in local papers of record (“Having left our bed and board, USCF is no long responsible for the debts of …”)? How about a mailing to every potential participant in future events (“Dear parent of a child under 17 - we would like to draw your attention to a dirty rotten scoundrel…”)
Or maybe people should just read the damn flyer to see what services are being provided?
Does Bill Goichberg provide the service of USCF rated games at his tournaments? I hope so, but listening to Professor Sloan, I am now getting a bit worried. The CCA flyers do not explictly say “USCF rated”; at least the one I got in yesterday’s mail did not. chesstour.com/nao07.htm
In fact, many tournament that I attend say “USCF membership required” but leave it as understood that it will be rated. The event in this thread was similar, but as of today, has not been USCF rated.
Michael Aigner
I apologize for failing to make that distinction. However, the affiliate that this person has used in the past expired earlier this year.
Michael Aigner
I would think that if the tournament advertises “USCF Membership Required” then that is an implicit agreement to have the tournament USCF-rated. If the TD refuses to have the tournament rated, a complaint to the Ethics Committee might be appropriate, for lack of more appropriate jurisdiction. But it might just be late in getting sent in.
Perhaps finding an expert in copyright and trademark law might help prevent this kind of thing in the future? Then use of the phrase “USCF membership required” or words to that effect may have serious legal penalties regardless of the user’s membership status.
Um, you might want to give some more thought to that. I am not an expert in trademark law, but one thing I know is that the holder must defend the trademark vigorously. Use it or lose it. Assuming “USCF” is markable at all (it may not be, as other organizations also use it), the costs of defending it are likely to be prohibitive.
Maybe; Maybe not.
I’ve heard rumors of some “USCF rated” events that allowed both USCF and non-USCF players to play in the same sections for the same prizes. When USCF members happen to play each other, those games are pulled out and submitted as a very cheesey USCF rated event.
Seki
What do these events have to do with the particular (but somehow strangely never named) event under discussion?
I’ve heard rumors of Santa Claus - should we discuss that, too?
OK. The name is Richard Peterson. Done. Likeable fellow; Has good ideas; May even have good intentions but leaves a large amount of road-kill in the rear view mirror as he moves about.
I know that I reported one of his TLA’s to the USCF that advertised a large event in Chess Life that contained the fine print that games between USCF players would be rated but that not all players would be USCF members.
I believe that USCF pulled the TLA for this event.
Richard Peterson will never be confused with Santa Claus.
Since two and a half weeks have passed and TDs are required to send in their reports within one week, it is no longer just hypothetical but rather quite likely that the tournament won’t ever get rated. It was the 14th All America Cup, organized by Richard Peterson on November 17-18 in the Phoenix, AZ area. As of today, the tournament has neither been rated on the MSA site nor is it listed under tournament reports received for Arizona in November 2007. The 2006 event didn’t get rated either, although the previous years did. It used to be a pretty big event with advertisement in Chess Life, and this inertia probably keeps it going today.
My guess is that, legally, Richard Peterson did nothing wrong. He carefully skirted the legal line to his advantage. The kids who played are simply out of luck; their parents had no way to know about Richard Peterson’s long history with the USCF. I believe there needs to be a method to discourage someone whom the USCF office already knows about from going to another state and repeating the cycle. It won’t help the kids this year, but there’s always next year and beyond.
Michael Aigner
Without getting into the specifics of any one event, just because an event hasn’t been rated in 2 1/2 weeks, that’s not proof it won’t show up.
Here’s a breakdown of the number of weeks between the ending date and the ‘received’ date for events rated so far in 2007. (0 means the event was received 6 days or less after it ended, 1 means it was received 7-13 days after it ended, etc.)
[code]weeks count
0 5318
1 875
2 285
3 172
4 81
5 52
6 29
7 27
8 18
9 15
10 15
11 13
12 12
13 12
14 16
15 4
16 5
17 4
18 1
19 2
20 2
21 2
23 1
24 4
25 2
27 1
29 2
30 1
38 1
42 1
52 1
70 1
73 1
102 1
106 1
111 1
114 1
[/code]
So about 4% of events are received more than three weeks after the tournament ends. Wow, that’s quite high, considering TDs are “required” to send the report in within a week. Are there any legitimate reasons for turning in an event so late? (aside from Acts of God or other one-time emergencies)
Well, I think it is safe to say that I would hope to be proven wrong in this example. Considering that 2006 didn’t get rated either, I’m skeptical.
Michael Aigner
What specifically do you recommend?
One reason for events to be late is memberships. If:
a) 95% of the event can be handled online
b) a significant number of players purchase new/renewal memberships on-site
c) the organizer tells them to write checks to “USCF”
Then…it may be difficult to get the memberships PAID FOR in time to submit the event withint two weeks.
I fell into this trap last Saturday. I had the entire event (including all memberships) submitted that evening. But, I also had approximately $300 in checks written to USCF. They went into the mail today. I (and perhaps some number of USCF staff) leave for Houston on Thursday. It may be tight for all those checks to be processed so that the event will pass the first level of validation.
It would be nice if I could have guaranteed those memberships with my credit card, and received a credit to my credit card when the checks were processed - but that might just be too complicated.
Mike! - any hints on how to speed this up?
(other than add “all checks written to the TD” in my standard agreement?)
If the TD puts the report in the mail 7 days after the event ends, it may take another 5-7 days before it gets to Crossville and another day or two before it’s processed by the office, which gets us to 2+ weeks on a ‘timely’ submission. (And if there are problems with the event, that can add days if not weeks, depending on how long it takes to get those problems cleared up.)
Ken, I’m afraid I don’t have any good ideas for how to improve things without creating other problems. In many ways we’ve become a victim of our own success, I’m seeing an increasing number of inquiries from players about events not being rated yet, sometimes no more than 2-3 days after the event ended.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, I know a good TD who wound up taking a lot of grief from players at an event he directed for an affiliate because the affiliate took about 3 weeks to get the memberships collected at that event sent to Crossville. The TD had the report ready to submit except for adding the IDs of several new players.
If the event does not get rated, perhaps the tournament results would still wind up getting posted? I'd recommend checking the website periodically ([youthchess.com/results.php](http://www.youthchess.com/results.php) ) to see if this happens. If the results are posted, the USCF might be able to use that to rate the tournament manually, if the Office received complaints by the members who played in the tournament. Do you know if any players who may have paid USCF dues at the tournament have received their memberships yet?
At the risk of repeatedly repeating myself: WHY does anyone expect that this event was ever intended to be USCF rated? Did ANY advertising say “USCF-rated”???
Given the history, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that this event will never be submitted for rating - and there was never any intent to submit it. IT"S A NON-USCF EVENT!!!
If someone ASSUMED that it was USCF-sanctioned and would be USCF-Rated, then they need to tell us WHY that was a reasonable assumption.
And, if they really CARE about it being USCF-rated, perhaps next time they will check for the Union Label BEFORE making the purchase.
Why in the world would USCF “post results” for a non-USCF event? Don’t we have enough work to do handling actual USCF events?
Again - what should USCF do about this? Take out an ad dis-avowing all actions by RP? Hire someone to walk behind him and shout out “not affiliated with USCF” every 10 seconds?
Rather than focus on whether Johnny got his precious 50 rating points for his outstanding performance in this non-USCF event, a better idea would be to inquire about people who paid for USCF memberships. Here are the questions I would ask:
a) who sold the membership?
b) was a receipt given?
c) was a USCF Affiliate name/number on the receipt?
d) was there a name of the Officer of that Affilliate signing the receipt?
and, of course
e) has the Office received the membership forms and the cash?
This seems to me to be much more of a problem than rating the event.
find ONE person who bought a membership, and find out if the membership has actually been delivered…and then go from there. Stop bleating on the Forum and do something about it.
Maybe because it was reported that USCF memberships were being sold there. I wasn’t there, and I haven’t seen the advance advertisements for the event, so I don’t know if they were actually requiring USCF memberships in order to participate or not, but if they were then that sounds like an implicit agreement to have the USCF rate the tournament (in return for having to pay the USCF dues to participate in it in the first place).
The USCF would not post the results, but there is a chance that the organizer might post them at: youthchess.com/results.php (or he might not).
Of course. But if the members who participated in the tournament complain to the USCF that they were misled into believing it was USCF-rated (depending on what was specifically represented to them), the EB might nevertheless decide that that is sufficient reason to rate the tournament (if the results are available).
Have fun in Houston!