The only games that you can get a USCF rating on are the scheduled events for the US Chess group. Your rating here only impacts pairings for the tournaments and has no bearing on USCF ratings.
The USCF has created two new rating categories; Online Blitz and Online Quick. The events in the group will change one of those two ratings and not OTB ones. The US Chess rating formula doesn't provide an initial rating like the site does but uses the results of your first four games to get an initial value and then uses that for the rating formula for your initial games.
If you ever do play OTB rated US Chess events, they will use one of your Online ratings to seed your rating for calculations instead of using the special rating formula on the first four games.
To your final question, you do get a membership card.
In order to play the events you will need to fill out the authentication form and join the group.
Hello,
First off, I am interested in becoming a first time USCF member, and would like to know a couple of things.
My parents have said that I cannot go to any real life chess tournaments that are rated, or even those that are unrated, but I recently discovered that there are USCF rated chess.com tournaments, which means that I could get a rating. Finally!!!
My question is the following: Does your chess.com rating effect your USCF rating, as in I have a below average blitz rating (Due to the fact that I played skilled people and lost(I have not gone above 1200 in blitz, I have only gone down)) will that effect my USCF rating, or is the chess.com rating not at all correlated to the USCF rating. Do they reset you to 1200 for USCF so that they have a starting point for you?
Also, when you become a member of the USCF, probably the Premium Young Adult member(As I am under 24) do you recieve a membership card?
Thank you in advance for any help you can give,
Sincerely,
TheKidney