USCF

You can order cigars here but the prices suck.

I don't think another competitive organization is what Chess needs, especially a non-profit. What are you going to do, claim that your US champ is better than the USCF's?

What I would like to see is USCF (or FIDE) set up a way to recognize the games played on various web sites. Some here have pointed out that local tournaments are run by local volunteers, and the USCF just certifies TD's and records the results. Why not do the same with web sites? So we play a game here, or at some unnamed competing site, and as long as we're both USCF (or FIDE) members, the game counts and gets an "official" rating. Even if it was limited to certain members only tournaments it would still be cool.

I think the time may be very near, perhaps it's here already, that your chess.com or ICC rating will mean more than a USCF rating.  I bet there are far more American players on chess websites than in the USCF.  Of course if you want a FIDE rating or title, you have to go through your national FIDE affiliate (the USCF for us Americans). 

So will the websites start bestowing their own titles?  Who will be the first chess.com Grandmasters?  How would a Chess.com master stack up against a USCF correspondence master vs. a 2200 ICC player? 

The USCF can learn a lot from the amazing job Erik and Co. have done with chess.com

It will be quite some time before online ratings are anywhere near as meaningful as OTB ratings. The issue, of course, is cheating.

Let's not beat around the bush--online chess is rife with cheating, whatever the managers of sites such as ICC, Playchess, or (dare I say it?) Chess.com may say. I know they are working on anti-cheating utilities, and I'm sure there is some effectiveness there. But at present, and probably into the foreseeable future, they will not be as effective as anti-cheating measures in place at OTB events.

In a USCF tournament, there are Tournament Directors (TDs) whose job it is to keep the players honest. Cell phones and most electronic devices are banned from the playing venue, and the use of books and other notes is forbidden. That's not to say that a player can't run to the bathroom, turn on the cell, and fire up Fritz--and I'm sure this happens all the time. But such players are few because it is much harder to cheat without being noticed, and because the consequences--up to a lifetime ban--can be severe.

At an online chess site, it is much harder to uncover a cheat without a credible tip, unless you stumble across something on a random audit. And while (hypothetical) user USuckAtChess may be banned, he'll likely reappear after a short absence as (also hypothetical) ImTheNewFisher.

Right now, there is some USCF-rated online play, but in these cases a) you are putting your actual name and USCF ID out there, and b) each of these games is (supposedly) monitored during play and reviewed before they are rated. While this is a good combination (especially since the number of games is manageable in terms of computer review), it still doesn't rule out the use of opening manuals or even tablebases.

Maybe we're headed in that direction; but until then, my USCF rating is my "real" rating, and my Chess.com rating remains my "Chess.com rating."

I’ve been a life member of the USCF for so long I don’t remember but my life membership cost me $100 so it’s been a while. I quit playing chess 20 years ago and returned to postal about 5 years ago then switched to server chess. Just some observations…

Living in Butt Crack, Ohio like I did in those days I had to travel 4 hours to tournaments and could only play in two a year. With the Fischer Boom I was playing about 2-3 times a month right near home. The glut of tournaments eventually ended and now I just don’t want to play OTB at all. Postal/server chess is becoming less and less attractive also. I’m going to guess that 50% of my opponents are using engines. At the master level it’s even higher and at the highest levels it’s 100%. That doesn’t mean you can buy an engine and play at those levels…those guys know how to get positions that engines don’t play well so most of us lose easily to them. All ICCF titled players use them but the highest rated are strong players to begin with. They have to be to get past the gaggle of other engine users.

This all makes server (and postal) ratings meaningless. I’ve got several ratings ranging from 1100 to 2300 which tells you nothing about how good or bad I might be. It’s going to be impossible to conduct a realtime online event and prevent engine use unless maybe you are going to play blitz. Even then somebody will manage to use an engine. Crap! I’m getting fed up with chess! Maybe it’s time to retire.

 For Live Chess that may be true. But for Online Chess the comparison is not to OTB, but to postal correspondence. With that comparison the opportunities for cheating are the same, and frankly I trust Eric with catching such cheaters more than I trust the USCF.

USCF only cares about one thing MONEY, that's it, USCF doesn't care about chess it's only concern is it's buttom line, USCF could have a lot of things though out the years to better chess but instead they chose to better their pocket books and have done absolutely nothing for the game of chess. USCF has held back the development of chess and is only concern with turning a buck. So the USCF is useless!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think chess played online should NEVER be applied to otb ratings !  Its a terrible idea imo. Yes, a GM using Rybka is gonna be stronger than a 1400 using Rybka, this is well known and logical.

 Let me be a bit clearer:  first, I didnt claim that SD time controls are NO benefit to players, I claimed its more a benefit to organizers than players. I think this is true. Second: what I am objecting to most is SD time control being used as the ONLY time control in a classic/standard chess event. I wouldnt mind if its something like 40 moves in 90 minutes then SD/30 after that. What I dont like is G/1 or some other SD format like that rated as classic chess. FIDE is using a lot of G/2h  here. Yes, its nice to know when the next round is and for it to start on time. I have played more than a hundred tournaments and how ofet has the first round started on time? What about your experience? Its extremely rare for the first round to start on time is my experience, which usually means it throw off the other rounds played that day. WHY ?  The usual culprit is greed in the form of the organizers allowing late entries to get a few more bucks. In todays computer age there is no excuse for this. Everyone can send their entry in by email. Noone should be allowed to enter after a certain time and no exceptions should be made. Maybe then the first round could start on time which means subsequent rounds could also.

A one time the catalog sales were a service to the USCF members. It's been awhile though, and now the catalog is simply aimed at extracting revenue from the members.

I use USCF Sales for two activities of value:

1. Price checking to remind myself how much better deals I get from ChessHouse and Wholesale Chess.

2. Buying Informants (the USCF still has exclusive US distribution rights).

Note that Kasparov called the split-off into PCA and FIDE one of the worst mistakes of his career.

Division is not something the chess world needs, not that USCF or FIDE appears to have the best interests of the top players at heart.

This is a good point, and if division is not the answer, it seems that all that's left is reform. So I was trying to think about how to reform the USCF, and I realized there's no point. Chess.com is a defacto Chess federation, even if Erik isn't calling it that.

What I'd like to see is Chess.com become more of a Chess federation. We have official tournaments. Why not crown the winner the champion of Chess.com (or if that's already being done, be a bit more vocal about it, cuz I have no idea who it is). Set up some in-house title requirements, so people can have the goal of becoming Chess.com masters and such. Maybe scale it down with titles below masters given the broader level of play around here.

I don't know, maybe Erik has good reasons for avoiding doing exactly that. But I think that would be cool.

I think that's not such a terrible idea ichabod. I can see a few issues that need dealt with that might be why it isn't already being done:

1) It would put a great deal of strain on the cheat detection system they have set up to ensure that nothing untoward is going on. With the amount of computing power that is available, it could be feasible to do analysis of EVERY game in tournaments where titles are awarded though.

2) They would have to really buckle down on the statistics of the system and what title or class would best suit a given range. This might pose the biggest challenge seeing as how the current chess.com population is averaged ~1350 and OTB players can't conveniently reset their rating.

3) Vigorous advertising would be necessary to attract enough of a crowd to make it all meaningful. The site is certainly huge already but I would think that with 500,000+ active members every day it would lend credence to the system.

That's all for now but there are other things we'd have to ponder out before making a real proposal of it.

It is much harder to cheat in postal correspondence, because so much more is allowed. Using computers and asking other people, for instance, is allowed. I'm not even sure how you would cheat.

Of course, "postal" correspondence is played over email these days, through web sites. As far as I know players play directly through the ICCF site and don't have much to do with the USCF.

That's true for ICCF postal chess, but I believe USCF postal chess still disallows engine use.

 I agree i woukd like the idea of adding live chess tournaments. This might be hard due to the fact that live chess is in beta but it would be nice to have

 Playchess is also an excellent server .

Might be, if you say so. But:

1. If Mr. X is caught cheating, I would like to see him banned. Not just with the rating deleted and free to cheat others again (which happens very often).

2. If I also do something else while playing a game there (like reading my email), it does not mean that I'm cheating.