What are Scholastic Chess Tournaments?
A scholastic chess tournament is a competition between students from Kindergarden to 12th grade
They play chess against one another, typically in a Swiss format, where players play all rounds of the tournament, and gain rating for winning, and lose rating for losing
Sometimes, a player who wins 3 games but loses 1 can lose rating, since the person they lost to was much lower rated than them
Is my child ready for Chess Tournaments?
Each month, coaches reevaluate those students who have never played in a tournament.
If the student has reached a King 1 level for lessons on chesskid and a 1000 level for puzzles on chesskid, coaches move on to evaluate the following:
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behavior
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fundamental chess knowledge
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comfortability with notating games
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comfortability using the clock
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comfortability with touch move rules
and more to determine whether a student is ready for tournaments.
We will let you know when they are ready, but having them work on their chesskid at home will definitely help chesskid.com
What is the USCF?
In order to play in official chess tournaments, students need to be signed up with the United States Chess Federation (USCF)
You can purchase a USCF ID for the student here: https://new.uschess.org/join-us-chess or send $21 to zelle@chessinbrooklyn.com for us to purchase an ID for you
IDs last 1 or 2 years and can be renewed
Understanding the USCF Rating System
After a tournament, you can search the student's name or ID on https://ratings.uschess.org/ to see the student's current rating and tournament history
Regular Rating
There are multiple types of ratings, but the Regular Rating is most often used for tournaments, which has longer time formats (25 minutes + for each side)
Official Rating
An official rating is a rating associated with a player - these are generated on the third Wednesday of every month and become official (shown below) on the 1st day of the following month
Provisional Rating
A provisional USCF rating is a temporary chess rating for players who have completed fewer than 26 rated games, causing their score to fluctuate significantly as the system evaluates their skill level.
You can see below that this player had a provisional rating of 379 for R (Regular).
They have played 3 games in total
---- Rating?
---- means that this player has not cleared the minimum requirement of 4 games needed to generate a USCF rating
Live Rating
A live rating is an up-to-date estimate of your next official rating based on your recent tournament history - it usually becomes your official rating although it can sometimes change slightly due to changes the USCF may make
In this example this player's Regular Live Rating went from 922 --> 914 in their most recent tournament
Floor
A floor is the lowest a player's rating can go - the higher their rating, the higher their floor becomes
