Who owns the scoresheet?

Running Chess Tournaments
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Probably a dumb question. I have read through the rule book and can’t find the answer to this one, but if I missed it, please scold me and point me to the right article/paragraph:

Who owns the scoresheet at the end of the tournament?

Per the rules, for regular games etc., the players are required to keep a scoresheet and record their moves, but what are they supposed to do with them after the tournament?

In this forum, I see some people requiring that the sheets be turned in, and some saying that players use their own notebooks.

As a TD, am I required to keep a scoresheet for each game as ‘proof of play’? If they give me the scoresheet, am I allowed to publish or use the scoresheet, say in a blog or something? Do I become the owner of them? Does the USCF own them?

Not intending to do anything specific, just not really sure what I am supposed to do with them after the tournament. I have only run one so far, I provided the scoresheets for the players, and at the end, they turned them in to me, but I figured I didn’t need them, but wasn’t sure. So I took a picture of each one and gave them back to the players.

I understand the need during play, so you can check for threefold position, 50 move rules, etc., but are there any requirements to keep them after the game?

What is the standard, and what do you do as a TD with the scoresheets after a tournament?

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The organizer owns the scoresheet. You are not required to keep a scoresheet but you can require it if you so desire. My experience generally has been that organizers allow players to keep their scoresheets (although I have seen some state championships require the top few players in the championship section(s) to surrender their scoresheets).

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15G. Ownership of scoresheets.
The scoresheets of all games in a tournament are the property of the sponsoring organization(s). If the organizer requires that a copy of each game score be submitted by the players, duplicate scoresheets must be provided, and players who fail to submit scoresheets may be penalized.

You’re not required to keep them and they can’t do much for you as a TD after the tournament. I keep them until I think any claims from the tournament are unlikely and then toss them.

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Thanks! I knew it had to be in there somewhere! I should get my eyes checked!

And @ChessEntrepreneur , would they keep the top players in the championship section for the purposes of post tournament claims?

EDIT: I suppose the bigger the prize fund/title, the more likely claims will happen?

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I’m not aware of any post-event claims that would have required examining the moves in scoresheets, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened somewhere. Murphy’s Law always applies.

I have seen post-tournament complaints about mis-reported results, where the TD mis-read the results sheet or the results as notated on the score sheets. I’ve also seen situations where both players turned in scoresheets claiming they won.

A few years back there were some high ranked players trying to claim that the moves they played in their games were their intellectual property. I don’t think those claims went very far, my understanding is that game scores are facts, exempt from copyright and other intellectual property claims. (But I am not a lawyer.)

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FIDE for norm events may require the score sheets. Also, you can use the score sheets to publish a bulletin on the tournament or a club bulletin for a club event. Not done much nowadays, but very popular in the past. The score sheets will also allow you to add a game or two to any write up of the tournament [state or local] for an article. Of course as already suggested you could just toss them away afterwards.

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I can see also using them for club prize for best game. As in, post the games and let the club members vote for the best game or game of the month/year, or something…

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FIDE for norm events requires PGN files.

1.9 Submission of Reports on Title Tournaments

Such tournaments must be registered as in Rating Regulation 0.2.

1.9.1 Reports must include a PGN file containing:

for Swiss and team tournaments, at least those games played by players who achieved title results,
for other tournaments, all games.

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Yes, FIDE requires the scores in certain circumstances, but never the scoresheets.

Briefly, the organizer owns the sheets and he can do whatever he wants with them. It is a kindness, especially if there is no intention to publish the games, to allow players to use a permanent scorebook and let them keep the score intact in the book. Making copies of interesting games rather than keeping the sheet is also generous.

When giving a best game prize, best practice is to ask players to nominate their own games. This cuts through the games that are less interesting and also allows players to correct, and neaten, their scoresheets. You may want to review all the games in certain invitational tournaments.

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I was always under the impression that organizer “owning” the scoresheet (even if the organizer has no interest in collecting them) was a legalism to make it impossible for a player to refuse to let the opponent see the scoresheet on request. (The organizer, after all, doesn’t actually own a player’s personal scorebook or notation device if use of those is permitted).

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When I organized the Texas Action Championship last year I required the top five boards in the championship section to provide copies of their scoresheets so that I could submit them to the Editor of Texas Knights, our state chapter’s magazine, for publication. Usually this was done with photos of the scoresheets rather than collecting the paper scoresheets themselves.

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How successful were they in interpreting the moves, too many scoresheets look like chicken scratchings. (One player I knew used to keep his scoresheet in Thai. When asked to hand it over to his opponent, he just smiled and handed it over.)

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