Is USCF working on a chess client like ICC that will allow all USCF members access into online play? I am suprised that they do not have one by now because of the demand for good online playing sites.
Thanks
Yes, but it is not live despite the advert in Chess Life.
Wonder why they are waiting for this because it would be a great feature to attract more people to USCF
Will the WCL tournaments migrate to this new site?
Past USCF attempts at this have met with somewhat less than stellar success. Why would anyone pursue the USCF site rather than one of the other available sites?
It would make more sense for USCF to supply programming and events on the existing servers. USCF can’t put an effective web site together, but we’re supposed to believe they can run a chess server?
The above quote: clubhouse leader for “understatement of the year”.
The idea of a(nother) USCF online server: clubhouse leader for “worst idea of the decade.”
I think to Grow USCF they are forced to create and manage a online chess server like ICC. I would love a USCF chess and would even pay more yearly for this option.
Providing online play and running a server aren’t necessarily the same thing. USCF used to think it had to manage the sales office itself and now contracts it out, for instance.
We tried this once, and failed miserably. And that was back when there were really only two serious competitors. Now, there are way too many places where one can play online. ICC, FICS, Playchess, GameKnot and Yahoo! come to mind immediately. You can actually access all of these for free, and pay for enhanced features on most.
If you want to enter an established market and be successful, you typically have to do one of two things: offer comparable service at a lower price than your competition, or premium service at the same or slightly higher price than your competition. We clearly can’t beat the competition on cost. As for services, other than providing rated tournaments online, there really is nothing we can offer that other servers don’t already provide quite well. And, since the other servers have their own rating systems, even that differentiation will be minimal in the eyes of most users.
As panchess correctly noted earlier in this thread, how are we going to develop a credible alternative to existing market leaders for online chess play when we can’t even produce a decent website?
(EDIT: fixed a posting attribution.)
Experience to date indicates that few would agree with you.
A difficulty is that part of the attraction of a chess server/service is the competition/training available. This is where it becomes very hard to break into the existing market. You go - and no one is there. So you go somewhere else.
In general I agree with you, but to quote Yoda, “There is another.” Buy (at least) one of the existing successful competitors.
True, of course. However, ICC might be in better position to “buy” USCF than the other way around. 
But the competition is composed of OTB USCF members, which is quite a plus. And, tournaments like those on Gameknot can be made available.
Moderator Mode: Off
Please provide details of this supposed experience…
Now that’s one of the best ideas I’ve seen in these forums!
Imagine what the ICC could do with OTB chess!
I am unable to see the point of the USCF creating yet another online chess playing website. There are already multiple free sites that do better than the USCF could. Nobody needs to even inform a free site when he organizes a competition to use an existing chess website, so no partnering deal is necessary.
Yet, maybe the USCF is partnering with an existing online chess playing website, instead of building its own new play site?
Whole thing is moot anyway, unless the USCF actively supports having some online play be officially RATED no differently than if it were OTBoard.
At least the technology part of the issue has been slayed recently. In my home there are at least three devices on which I could play online while sitting outside at a picnic table in a park.
Thus the place-to-play infrastruction problem/cost is gone for some types of formal rated competitions (such as club vs. club in different cities).
Yet Tournament Organizers / T.D.'s show no interest in the new infrastructure freedoms or in overseeing online competitions: maybe they feel there is less money to be made in the new options.
Six guys could bring that iPads or Android cellphones, and their real chess pieces and boards, to my house near Seattle and compete against a similar team who sits in Anaheim.
But how much money does a T.D. (there to keep us honest, I guess?) need to be paid to make it worth his evening? — given that there seems to be a taboo against being the T.D. in such circumstances who also plays in the event. The T.D.'s pay burden is spread among only six players, instead of among 25 at a standard weekend event.
Or is there another source of T.D. reticence to leverage the options afforded by the new technologies? 
.
Exhibit A: US Chess Live.
We spent seven years and six figures on that idea…only to learn what any reasonably bright undergrad business major could have told us.
The USCF’s membership pool is too small to support such a service by itself, unless said service was some sort of loss leader. And if we open the services to non-members, we have to provide some sort of value they cannot get on an already-established service.
Other than providing USCF rated tournaments - a service that was offered on US Chess Live - I do not see any area where USCF could provide that extra value. And now, we are years behind our potential competitors, who have grown in number and in features offered.
If we were flush with extra cash, I would not be so critical of this idea, though I would still say it is destined for failure. However, current and former EB members have said that we need to run six-figure surpluses for the next several years just to recoup what was spent on the Polgar lawsuits. Another foray into setting up a server by USCF just seems ill advised, IMO.
Yes, Ron, I would have thought US ChessLive - a concept that I strongly supported at the time (although I had preferred different implementation) was obvious enough. At the time I had hoped that we might still be at the tail end of being able to catch on in the Internet. The issue is basically what Boyd spells out - we have to offer “at large/non-USCF members” something that they cannot get on other sites, but we also have to offer USCF members more. The idea that was discussed was to incorporate video directly into the interface - I thought the advent of that for online chess lessons (particularly for juniors) would be enough to attract professionals and juniors - and thus eventually everyone in between.
I had also hoped that we would work to develop scholastic and nonscholastic leagues with websites to support schedules, results, commentary, etc. With monitored online play scholastic chess could grow while eliminating some travel (great for evening leagues - but not something to completely replace weekend tournaments), and the websites would be something that we could sell advertising to because traffic would be driven to them.
The hope is that we’d be able to develop a new type of “membership” that would work with state high school associations for rating their chessplayers and providing the expertise to help run their tournaments. We really miss the boat on that.
Growing this segment would allow more non-traditional advertising (and perhaps garner some members) to hopefully offset the costs (and actually produce revenue.)
None of that worked out - and certainly my hope for it was unfounded as a result.
In terms of an online server - perhaps a correspondence server will eventually pay for itself? I’m not sure of that one either - and it certainly won’t if we don’t eventually eliminate true postal play.
Agree with Boyd and Kevin.
There are two basic life lessons that a lot of people apparently don’t want to learn:
- Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
- The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.
USCF’s partnering efforts have never worked out well. Before US Chess Live, there was the GameTime clock. Several years before that, there was a tabletop dedicated chess computer. I think there were one or two others before that.
USCF does not run OTB tournaments (well, except for the US Open and a handful of others). Instead, it encourages its affiliates to do so, and offers rules and ratings services. It should do the same for online tournaments. Provide a separate rating system for online events, and allow online chess providers (not just one, but all of them) to affiliate with USCF, run rated tournaments, and submit them to USCF for rating. Since the rating system would be separate from OTB, there would be no need for hand-wringing over polluting the OTB ratings, nor for the resulting cumbersome anti-cheating measures that have been suggested (such as having a live TD at each computer location, etc).
Let’s embrace the efforts of online chess organizers, and partner with them as a group, just as we now do with OTB organizers.
Bill Smythe