What needs to change in US chess

Thanks so much for the clarification. I also didn't know that the players must keep their score. That's pretty cool.

Now, what does that mean; "If your 30 minutes elapse you lose, like in blitz." So in other 'time variations' you don't automatically lose on time-out?

in other time controls you get about 120 mins for the first 40 moves after you make that many moves you get something like 60 more mins added to the clock

 There are also "delay clocks".  When using a delay clock, the first five seconds (typically) of a move don't count.  In a 25/5 delay time control, each player gets 25 minutes to make all of his moves, but the first five seconds of each move are not counted.

It makes a big difference at the end of the game.  If you are running out of time, as long as you can make your move within 5 seconds, you can keep playing.

The Regular Adult Membership, $29,  provides everything the Premium Adult Membership , $42, does except that you only get Chess Life in PDF format instead of dead tree and PDF format.  

It doesn't create a duty to provide tournaments, it only creates a duty to provide a service to rate games that are submitted. It would be nice if they could do what you want, but there is no way they could afford it especially at the current membership rates which many already think are excessive. Perhaps it would be better if State Associations worked on organizing local tournaments, but they have even less money to make things happen.

My guess is that the reason the USCF is always embroiled in controversy is that the people that end up running it care more about having control than they do about promoting chess. They also tend to have long histories with each other and old feelings that die hard.

This last election probably brought in some of the best people in a while, but they are going to be tied up with all the lawsuits and most likely will not get anything done.

Originally it made sense to charge rating fees because it required someone in the office to manually enter things and do whatever they had to do. I think they shouldn't charge rating fees for events entered online or at most an extremely small flat fee to help defray the cost of system maintenance. They will never give up that stream of revenue though.

Chess in the US is extremely non-competitive. Really, though I hate to admit it, Europe has a far better chess culture than the US. For a player to really get anywhere you would have to got to Europe eventually.

how many of us would be willing to donate 10 a month to promote the well being of chess?

I will re-submit my post to reiterate my overall views. for those of us that talk about prizes, paying too much, too little, time control, remember, tournaments need to be run for different people.

chsskrazy: that is the longterm investment plan. it will yield all the results.

rooperi: the 25/25 tournament idea is phenomenal. the concept in general is something I had put thought into before. low entry, and availability for everyone. the biggest challenge in my location, for what I would like to shoot for is a location.

As Tony said ( from Scarface) " with the right woman, I go straight to the top"... in this case, with the right tournament location :) thank you for this.

Chessroshi:  I could understand how based on your availability you would choose to not participate  on many events.

In regards to your second post,  my intentions when choosing a title for the forum was to name it "Problems in Chess", but then I thought the negativity would be too much for such a "holy" place like chess.com :)

Popularity as a whole I mean, in general... completely.

if there were a closed door sit down with 100 meaningful people in chess ( I would be outside the door) and they made a list of the most important things in chess in terms for the future, chess.com would more than likely rank top 10. the community resources are valuable and will be a platform for the future popularity of the game.

Teaching chess in schools is quite an easily attainable thing to do, but adult level education... I would be highly interested in attempting to do that.. if anyone can elaborate on how to go about, I would more than likely follow and report my progress with everyone ;)

As far as tournament chess, I would have to disagree with the thought that it will have limited success. I will share my thoughts... It has to do with that quote from the movie "blow" "you failed because you had the wrong dream george".

I think the reason why most chess businesses or ideas, specially tournaments fail is because the people running them only cater to chessplayers. If we take the time to promote the  game to the larger population, I think chess, and chess tournaments as a whole would make it.

tournaments need to be run for different people. there is the billy blanks from the park, the charlesgalofre aspiring chess professional, the real donald's, and the counting the stars businessmen who are always too busy :) --  and then the rest.

we should bring in the money from the larger population, put the press money and cameras on the aspiring and donalds, and celebrate the billy blanks, businessmen-- and then the rest..

Issues with the USCF are beyond my udnerstanding but it seems to be the opinion of the majority that they are not meeting the demands of chess in the country.. maybe a webpage with multiple signatures and their uscf id numbers would make soemthing happen.. possibly overrun the uscf.

movement.

Right now they are busy arguing about Robert's Rules of Order and calling the question during the annual delegate's meeting.  To see how dysfunctional it truly is, just spend some time in the USCF Issues forum at uschess.org

I'd be willing to put in more than that. 

Donate?  I would be willing to pay 10 dollars a month to play Chess.  My $5.00 membership to Chess.com contributes to the well being of Chess.  When I go to a tournament and pay an entry fee, I'm contributing to the well being of Chess.

I guess I don't understand the question.  The way I see it, the only thing I really have that contributes to the well being of Chess is my own willingness to play, and be part of a community that plays.  I, personally, also run tournaments.  Some of the better players teach, either directly in the form of lessons or clinics, or indirectly by discussing or blogging about their games and strategies, or giving pointers to weaker players. 

If I were to say, "Please give me money, and I will use it to contribute to the well being of Chess," I would hope Chess players would be smart enough to not give me the money.  If, on the other hand, I held a tournament with a ten dollar entry fee, I would hope that some players would decided to come and play, in order to contribute to the well being of the Chess community, even if they really weren't in the mood for Chess that weekend.

I would say the same.

chess needs to do the same thing that poker does and team chess is the best place to start and all high school need a chess team not just the rich schools it must

ive had similar feelings about chess "degree's" being the equivalent to your 5-minute rating online. because of how hard it is to play in the qualified events for titles, therefore the most you could aspire is to have a high 5 min rating online.

i could empathize with what your saying about the uscf, unfortunately there are not that many organizations to compare it to and its possible to say that the 40 given to the uscf could signify more than a rating.

your right in the sense that the organization has done very little for chess in all the years its been running. that would be my opinion.

gokumma, a network of highschool chess teams seems like a palpable goal.