What is the state today of Over the Board Chess, and the USCF?

MCA I meant, but I know you know what I meant

I wouldn't waste time on anything USCF. The quality of the magazine has gone down considerably; it's now full of advertising, silly games, and many pages for the executive board to give their pretentious opinions instead of hearing from the membership. The forums and website are antiquated. The leadership is full of bad ideas and dismissive of good ideas. 

If you want to play in USCF events, then you will have to get membership. But I wouldn't do anything beyond that. 

Yeah, I'm probably going to the one in Troy.

Yes, MCA has a calendar.  That's how I found the Troy event.  I'm a Chess insider, though, so I knew where to look.  (Well, I was an insider.  I've been outside for a few years.)  There is also one huge, huge, problem with MCA as a calendar of events.  If you want to list on the MCA calendar, your events have to have mandatory MCA membership for players at your event.  More cost.  So, some clubs won't advertise with the MCA, and once again you end up with no calendar of events.  There's one here, and one there, and one over there.

     Of course, an outsider stumbling on the USCF site would see almost no events, and the few he would see would be very expensive.  Not interested in laying out that kind of cash, he never looks again.   Experts in customer acquisition would realize just how bad that is.  MCA is better for people in Michigan, so if the Chess community is lucky, he sees MCA before USCF.  There, at least, he sees a couple of inexpensive options that don't seem to take up a whole weekend, but then he sees the USCF and MCA membership required banners.  Right off the start, that might turn him off, because he's just thinking about playing Chess one afternoon, and he sees that five dollar entry fee.....and then adds 40 dollars for USCF membership, and 15 for MCA, and now he's looking at 60 dollars for something that he isn't even sure he wants to do, but would like to try it once.

I don't know what it's like in other states.  Is there a state association to track local events, and do the players, including first time players have to pay a fee to a state organization to play?

Since you offer no examples to support your argument, I think it's safe to be dismissive of you and your post.

My point was that compared to 40-50 years ago, the USCF offers far more services at an annual dues cost that is less expensive, when adjusted for inflation.  Do they do everything I think they should do?  Of course not.

Go to the USChess.org home page > Play > Club Directory ... it will give you this index page of states :http://www.uschess.org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,198/

Select your state and it will give you a list of all the USChess affiliates, with contact information.

I already know how to do this.  I'm an insider.  When I was in tournaments, I was a local TD, (i.e. the actual "local TD" designation, one step above club TD), I organized my own events.  I talked to people.  I played in events.  I went to clubs.  I was a member of an actual USCF committee.  I know all about this and I've seen it from the inside.

And the USCF is  governed by a group of people who can't imagine that in the 21st century they have to make themselves accessible and affordable, and what it means to do that.

I'm reconsidering whether to go to that tournament in Troy.  I went to the signin page, and they actually ask for an expiration date for MCA membership.  That makes me suspect that if I showed up to play, they might actually make me purchase the membership.  That three hour tournament will cost me 60 bucks.  (And yes, I know.  TD, committee, insider.  I'm well aware of all of this.)

It isn't worth 60 bucks to play three games of chess.  If I decide to do it, it will because I've also decided to get back on the inside and change the way things are done.  But do I really have the energy to run for the Executive Board?

It's only $60 because you're assigning the USChess dues to one tnm't even though you're elgible to play in a year's worth of tournaments.

Hey, I get it, chess players tend to be a frugal group.  My other pastime,  besides chess, is golf.  I golf about 10 times a year, and with league dues, greens' fees and (mandatory) cart rental I spend far more than I do to play in about the 10 USCF rated tournaments I average per year.

No one is forcing you to play rated OTB chess.  You can always play casual games at the library where your opponent whines if you don't let him take a move back, or play folks on chess server, who hide behind a faceless screen name and lets his clock run out for 5 min in a dead lost game.  Your choice.

Slightly controversial opinion here, based on what I've personally seen playing USCF/FIDE chess in the US:

People always bring up how US players have lower FIDE ratings then USCF ratings by a significant margin (>100 points), but this doesn't really take into account the way that FIDE works in the US. In most parts of the US, you only get FIDE rated games by entering open sections of major tournaments; most players below about 2300 USCF are playing class sections which are not FIDE rated. As a result, these players don't gain FIDE points when they get stronger, and their FIDE rating ends up significantly under-rated.

I'm an extreme example of this. I played in 2 FIDE rated tournaments when I was 1200, and by the time I hit 2200 USCF I had only played in enough FIDE events to climb to 1600 or so. I know many similar stories (if less extreme) among players in the 2000-2300 range in the US.

Also note, that even US players in places with more easily accessible FIDE games will lose a significant number of rating points when playing other under-rated FIDE players, for example if they go to a major open tournament.

My guess is that the actual gap between FIDE and USCF ratings is only about 50 points (if not slightly less), which is more in line with the actual conversion formula that is used for initial USCF ratings for foreign players (as expected).

Current formula used by uscf seems to be 2000 fide = 2060 uscf, difference grows very slightly as ratings increase.

Definitely isn't hundreds of points though.

One of those happy situations where both disputants are... right!!!

Disputant A:  USCF sucks.  Could be doing so much better, and so much more.

Disputant B:  Compared to what it was before, USCF is much better.

I'm a recent returnee to USCF OTB chess, paid my membership dues, haven't played many games (maybe 4-5 at the weeknight club tournaments of G60/d5), and while I play both online and OTB, there is just something inherently better in my subjective opinion about OTB over Online Chess.

Two ways to learn about local tournaments (besides USCF Calendar):  Talk to people and Google research.  It's not a big deal, and it's certainly not hard.

Critics of USCF are not entirely wrong, and defenders of USCF's progress are not entirely wrong either.   It's Christmastime, a time of peace and goodwill because Christ has come as a baby.  So peace and goodwill for all chessplayers!!

The baby was Jewish, so it's win-win

@Laskersnephew, #62: 

Tis the season for Chinese food.  That's reason enough to celebrate. Christmas falls during Chanukah this year.  General tsao's chicken seems like a good choice.

When my kid was about seven years old, I bought him Majestic Chess.  One of the magical artifacts you can get in that game was a scroll of wisdom that suggests a good move, but it's a use once and discard item.  There was a software bug that sometimes let you keep the artifact, and he managed to get eight moves out of it.  This happened on the first day of Chanukah, so the kid concluded it was a Chanukah miracle.

I was thinking about what had changed since 1975, and its impact on Chess.  Obviously, the primary element of the answer is "the internet", but how has it actually affected Chess?  One obvious answer is the existence of this site, and others like it.  One doesn't have to leave his house to play Chess anymore.  However, I, like many others, still greatly prefer OTB tournaments over online, and I, personally prefer tournaments to club style play as well.  Furthermore, I think the availability of online Chess has been competition for USCF, but in some cases it drives people toward OTB play.  The low entry barrier of online play gets people interested.

In my opinion, though, the availability of online Chess is  not the biggest change that the internet has brought to the Chess world.  What the internet has done is made communication and information sharing so much easier.  It's easier to find Chess clubs, but more importantly, it is easier to find every other club, for every other hobby.  Back in the dark ages before the internet, just connecting with people of similar interests was kind of difficult.

One consequence of that was, I suspect, that people had fewer hobbies.  As a result, they put more into their primary hobby.  So, if you went to the effort of actually buying Chess Life, and looking in the tournament section, which was the only way to find a tournament, and then actually went to the effort of going there, you were probably pretty serious about it, and you probably didn't have any other hobby competing for a huge chunk of what time you have left after the family and work time was done.  I, personally, am a FIRST Robotics mentor, and I'm in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I go to board game groups, and I would like to add Chess back into the mix, but if I did, it would be competing for third place with games in general.  Back when I was in it before, it was number 2, slightly behind SCA.  Robotics pushed it down the stack, and off.

The point about that anecdote is that I won't be spreading the cost of those required memberships around a lot of tourneys.  Whenever I bring up costs, that's the answer I get, but for me, that simply isn't true.  I seriously doubt I would make four tourneys a year.

The USCF doesn't really want players like me, or at least it would seem so.  Their membership policies are geared toward people for whom their primary hobby is Chess.

Maybe that's a good thing.  I could make an argument for excluding us casual players.  I just wish they wouldn't, and, moreover, I don't think it's sustainable.  I think there's a reason that the proportion of kids in the membership has mostly increased each year, and eventually it will reach the point where it's just viewed as a kids game.  I know lots of non-Chess players already see it that way.  

And for what it's worth, I had resigned myself to paying the USCF dues in order to play on Sunday, but when I saw there was no way to avoid the MCA fees on top of that, my enthusiasm waned and I'm leaning against going.  In truth, I won't make up my mind completely until Saturday night.

I thought it was 15, but checking the site I see that was the "with magazine" price.  

People make economic decisions for all sorts of odd reasons.  In  my case, a huge part of it isn't the actual 10 dollars.  It's the irritation at the policy.  When I was organizing tournaments, I was aiming at low income people, including people from Pontiac for whom ten dollars was a lot of money.  MCA wouldn't allow me to put the event on the calendar without the "MCA membership required".  It's a long story, but it became a serious bone of contention.  I didn't want to charge it.  I knew it was a factor in keeping people away and it was an issue.  I never figured out what benefit I got by helping to provide operating funds for the MCA anyway.

As an aside, I knew several people who were officers of the MCA at the time, and all of them were good people, but we just didn't see eye to eye on policy.

That is true, but I am hard-pressed to think of many organized activities that cost less than rated, OTB chess.  

yeet 

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