USCF Title - 4th category

It is just a goal to set for yourself... Your goal, for example, after achieving fourth category, would be to get a third category, then second, then first, then candidate master, then life master, then senior life master. (The last three do have abbreviations). 

Stumbled on this thread doing a search.

Back when I was running tournaments, I tried to find a way to easily look up a player's highest title, and my plan was to arrange seating in the hall based on title instead of rating, at least within a score group.  (i.e. "Board 1" in the first round would be occupied by whoever had the highest title, instead of whoever had the highest rating.  In the second round "board 1" would be the highest titled player who had one win, etc.)

I also wanted to announce people who had achieved norms for the titles at the end of the tournament, but without easy access to the existing titles, it was hard to know the answer.  I would have had to look through the web page to find it, and I just didn't have the time.

The title system was one of the most obscure and least popular feature that the USCF invented, and I thought it was a missed opportunity.  Very few people even knew it existed below the various "master" levels.  I think "achieving a norm", or a title, could have been a good way to provide an incentive for people, but  without better publicity, it just didn't work.  I know it sounds cheesy, but people do respond to those little incentives.  

I'm surprised more people don't keep track of Category titles. Most people don't talk about titles unless they are Candidate Master or higher, otherwise they say they are 1900, 1800, 1700 et cetera. It's just a different way of describing your playing strength that somehow didn't catch on.

It's subtly different than that.  It recognizes specific accomplishments.  The most important difference is that, unlike a rating, it lasts forever.  A rating reflects how well you play today.  A title reflects that at one time, you could consistently play at a certain level.

Many people reading this know very well, but some have yet to learn, that no matter how good you are, and no matter how much you are improving, someday you will hit a peak, and then you will go downhill.  Such is the way of life.

As for why they didn't catch on, part of it is that USCF didn't actually push them.  As a TD, I could download a rating database, but I couldn't download a title database, which means I couldn't use that information at my tourneys.  

The rest of it is probably a lot of people thought it was a bit pretentious.

As for what appealed to me, as a TD, about them, it gave some way of making a tournament significant other than the cash prize.  I was always ranting and raving about chess being too expensive, and the fixation with prize money was a major contributor to that.