What level of TD is required for a state championship?

Running Chess Tournaments
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As we now have 4 TD’s and a fairly active, albeit little community, we are working on putting together a non-profit affiliate and a state chapter submission to the USCF.

One of the questions that we had were what level of TD was required to hold a state championship tournament?

As far as I can tell, it would just be the usual level required for the number of players, e.g., for a tournament expecting to draw 50 players or less (60 with assistance), then a club TD would suffice. Or if we expect 50-100 players (120 with assistance), a LTD would suffice.

I just want to check to make sure we would be able to run state championships with the current TDs that we have, or if we had to call in a TD from out of state for a championship event.

Though inexperienced, I have run enough category D level events to meet the requirements of LTD, however, my personal rating is still not established, so as far as I understand, I cannot take the test yet.

But, even if I was an LTD, the new state chapter is forming in Anchorage, which is a city about 350 miles from where I live, and the only TDs in Anchorage are club level TDs at this time. I am just checking if I need to plan to go to Anchorage every year for the state championship event or not, until the TDs in Anchorage become LTDs.

I found nothing in the rule book that states the TD requirement for state champions, only for national champions, unless I missed it or misunderstood it, which is always possible.

Thanks for your time.

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Are you talking about an Open (i.e. “adult”) state championship or a Scholastic state championship? Would there be any reason to expect that an Open championship would even be close to 50 players? A scholastic championship (coming from nowhere) could be almost any size. There are a lot of parents who think their children can play chess who really are nowhere near tournament ready. You might think about a rated Open section and unrated Scholastic section. You could do the latter with no clocks—just have a few to put on long running games (there won’t be many). Since it’s unrated, you wouldn’t need to worry about the TD level, and you could also be a bit loose about draw rulings. (Don’t need to count 50 moves—if it’s fairly clear someone has no idea how to force checkmate, give them a much shorter limit.)

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Well, our last event was 26 players in the open rated section, and my co-TDs had 34 players in an unrated event. My next event is a month away with 25 players already signed up, so I suspect that if we held a titled event, more might come, but I could be wrong.

For the most part, I anticipate less than 60 players, I just wanted to check if a state championship had any special TD requirements.

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That’s true, a small city named Homer wants me to fly down there for their school chess club, which by itself is 60 players, and that’s just a small school. If we did an event at one of the public high schools here in Fairbanks, I’m sure we could pull over 100 students just on interest, since for a scholastic event within a school, all of them could play for the $40 scholastic affiliate fee instead of individual memberships.

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The short answer to your question is that US Chess does not set any different limits on TD certification levels required for state championship events, though the state association, which controls who runs those events, may do so.

As with all events, the ‘expected number’ of players determines the certification level needed. That way in the event of an unexpectedly large turnout, the chief TD is still acceptable. However, if a recurring event routinely draws, say, 150 players, the organizer should anticipate that and use an appropriately certified chief TD.

National championship events may have more strict limits, even if they never approach 50 players.

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and there is the “should not” vs “may not” wording.
I’ve seen a club TD as the chief TD of a 400+ player event & 400+ was expected.

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I’ve seen a club TD as the chief TD of a 400+ player event & 400+ was expected.

I’ve seen that numerous times as well, and despite my suggestions over the years, US Chess appears to have little or no interest in enforcing those limits.

OTOH, I can think of a few club or local TDs who probably are better directors than many senior TDs and possibly a few NTDs.

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The reason for “should not” versus “may not” is to cover cases like one where I was an LTD floor chief of an almost 400 player scholastic state championship when the scheduled chief TD got hospitalized by a car accident the night before the tournament (his was hit by the other driver). If the wording was “may not” then the tournament would have had to be cancelled. There were a few glitches but we worked through them and it gave me a better appreciation for why there were player limits.

That said, if there are any problems with an event and it becomes a TDCC complaint then in the past the (intentional) lack of an appropriate certification level has increased both the likelihood and severity of penalties.

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Those players will still need ID numbers. I have used the pay later option (creates an ID number without requiring an immediate payment) for players in JTP (Junior Tournament Participant) sections (Mike Nolan may know a cleaner method). They will need to pay for memberships to play in any non-JTP sections (you can have a K-3 JTP section in an event with other non-JTP sections).

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Yes – almost always a scholastic and most probably did have a senior lined up.

I always though that a local should be able to do larger scholastics than 100(120). When I was approached to direct a scholastic at a local school we had zero Seniors in the area. We kinda figured we would get >100 since just two schools had almost 150 students in their chess programs. When I got my 400 total players I took the test. We now have about 6-8 senior tds in the area. I try to encourage club tds to become locals by offering “free” entry fees in my tournaments to locals+ level TDs

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There are interpersonal skills that TDs need to have that aren’t in the rulebook or covered on the TD certification tests.

IMHO there’s a stronger argument that scholastic events involve issues that are often harder to resolve than the rules questions at events with experienced (mostly adult) players, and that the staffing for those events needs to be higher on a players-per-TD basis as well as on certification level.

And it isn’t clear that having run more tournaments or having higher TD certification improves those interpersonal skills.

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True, when I did a k-12 scholastic event in May, I used the batch upload to input their names and get ID numbers. You can specify JTP instead of pay later, so it is free, since the school signed up for a school affiliate.

It was pretty easy though, as there were only 14 students in their chess club.

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I haven’t actually used the membership batch upload system since it was rewritten in 2020, so I’d lean on what other TDs who have used it suggest.

Otherwise, I agree that an event can have JTP and non-JTP sections in it, but any new players still need an ID generated, though they don’t need to pay dues if they only played in a JTP section.

(As a reminder, all players in a JTP section must meet the age/grade requirements for that type of JTP event, adult house players are not allowed.)