USCF Senior TD Preparation

Hi everyone, welcome to the first of my blog posts about improving in the world of chess as both a player and a tournament director.

Today I'll be tackling the journey I'm on as a TD for the Charlotte Chess Center where I usually run the Sunday Afternoon Classical events, but have been branching out to run other events including: Friday scholastic quads, Sunday scholastic quads, the beginner-friendly u1000 Sunday and u800 Wednesday events for our scholastic players.   Since I started working here back in October 2024, I've worked 20 events, most of which as the chief TD.

As the CCC grows and wants to implement more FIDE rated events into their schedule, that means that I have to work towards improving my certification from Local TD to Senior TD in addition to getting my requisite certification from FIDE.

Now in my time with those 20 events and hundreds of games, I've had to handle a lot of the normal questions - illegal move, my opponent wrote his move down before he made his move, touch move claims where nobody but the two players saw it, accidental release of a piece during a move, clock improperly set, etc.  

That being said, the Senior TD exam that I'm in the process of taking is hard but not in a "your philosophy professor gave you a True/False exam" way, but more in an Intro to Law way.  It's not so much about finding the explicit rule that answers the question on a 1:1 basis - rather it's about less clear cases and some of the rules that may only ever come up once or twice for you as a player.

Now per the rules of the exam and the TD committee, I can't talk about the specifics of the test, but it is difficult and for a good reason - as you climb the ranks from Club to Local to Senior to Associate National to National TD, the stakes that you're going be in charge of get higher and the problems you cause with a bad ruling or a badly run tournament get larger.

All in all, I hope that going forward the biggest hurdle I face is SwissSys.  And let's be honest, that program and I have been fighting for 20 years.