Playing USCF-Rated games on chess.com
Playing USCF-Rated games on chess.com
USCF members can play in USCF-rated tournaments on chess.com. The group “USChess – Members Only” has several weekly USCF-rated tournaments. To join this group, follow these steps:
- Make sure you are a current member of USCF.
- Complete the authentication form to link your chess.com username to your USCF ID. The link for the form is:
https://www.chess.com/news/view/uscf-member-authentication-9266
- Wait 3-10 days while USCF verifies the information.
- Apply to join the “USChess – Members Only” club on chess.com:
https://www.chess.com/club/uschess-members-only - Once you are approved, you can play in the various USCF-rated tournaments run by this group. Here’s a link to the schedule:
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/tournament-schedule
Notes on USCF-rated play on chess.com
- When playing in a chess.com Live tournament, the chess.com ratings are used for pairings, whether the tournament is also USCF rated or not. Bullet is up to 3 minutes; Blitz is above 3 minutes to 10 minutes; Rapid is more than 10 minutes.
- Once the tournament is over, the TD must manually submit the games to the USCF, which rates the games. The usual USCF ratings (Regular and Quick) are not used. Rather, there is a USCF Blitz online rating (up to 10 min.), a USCF Quick online rating (more than 10 to 29 minutes), and a USCF Regular online rating (30 minutes and above).
- The games are usually not submitted to the USCF for rating until up to 7 days after the tournament is complete, to allow for Fair Play checking.
- Anyone caught cheating faces sanctions from both chess.com and USCF. Chess.com runs an algorithm to look for computer cheating, and the TD also does some checking.
- Sometimes pairings might be by USCF rating (though not in the group discussed above), but then the chess.com tournament format cannot be used. Rather, the TD makes the pairings outside of chess.com, then the players must challenge each other according to the pairings.
