Dear GM Susan Polgar,
Please feel free to use the message below in whole or part for your on-line blog. Again, thank you for reading my email messages. Sincerely, Michael Allard
USCF Postal Chess and Other Executive Board Issues
Since early June of 2006 USCF has not rated completed postal or email chess games yet it continues to advertise on its web site and within Chess Life that it provides such a service.
This matter is very serious for a number of reasons.
First, approximately 3,000 USCF members play USCF postal and email chess currently. Although this is an approximation, each of these members spends about $100.00 yearly on event entry fees and related material such as chess post cards bought through USCF. If we assume that each of the 3,000 members just mentioned plays 12-20 games on an annual basis, the significance of USCF’s nonrating fiasco becomes very clear. Currently there must be tens of thousands of completed games waiting to be rated.
If such a situation had arisen for over-the-board chess a tremendous uproar would come about. USCF postal chess and email players are treated very much like second class members but the composition of members who play this kind of chess is very significant. Like me, many of postal and email chess players are elderly and retired (long time USCF members) and for various fiscal and physical reasons dare not venture out to play OTB chess. Many others are physically disabled and depend on postal chess as a primary form of entertainment. A number of active duty U.S. armed forces personnel play email and postal chess.
I raised these issues initially in late September of 2006 to Bill Goichberg. He was kind of enough to respond and indicated that the postal chess rating system would be back on-line soon.
In late December of 2006 I raised these issues with Joan DuBois. She too responded and indicated that the new software needed to be tested. She did not indicate why the old rating software was trashed. Nor did she respond to my willingness to raise funds to help accelerate the new software implementation.
Chess Life has completely ignored these critical issues for USCF postal chess. The USCF web site initally had a statement about a “short delay” in ratings. Then in January of 2007 it revised that statement to read that it was hopeful that the new rating system would be ready by early 2007. Well, early 2007 has come and gone.
Not only am I a USCF postal chess player but also a USCF life member. I have received a total of 15 emails and letters from current USCF and former USCF postal chess opponents concerning this matter.
I attempted to raise this matter with my USCF delegate but his/her name and email address cannot be found in Chess Life or the USCF web site. Please remember that not everyone has a computer.
With the exception of Mr. Goichberg, no other Executive Board member has responded to me. Mr. Goichberg and the current chair of the postal chess committee had not responded to my most recent emails.
Two USCF employees have thanked me for raising this matter as an important issue but desire that their respective names not be made public.
This matter of no USCF postal/email chess ratings is not only horrendous, it raises other critical issues.
USCF delegate names, addresses, and email addressed should and must be posted in each Chess Life issue and on the USCF web site. These individuals must be active, responsive, and accountable.
It’s obvious to me that USCF needs a member ombudsman for both professional and amateur members. We have paid for certain services (in this case timely rated postal chess games) and are entitled to them. We are entitled to periodic and regular explanations and not ignored or dismissed.
The current USCF postal chess rating fiasco jeopardizes USCF as a whole. As a non-for-profit entity it continues to advertise services for postal chess upon which it does not deliver. This is not only a federal tax matter but also one within the realm of interstate commerce and U.S. Postal regulations.
I know other members feel the same as I and I hope they address this matter directly to the USCF’s CEO and Executive Director.
Michael Allard
USCF Life Member
This is just one of the many problems and Mr. Allard was not the first person to complain about this. We must do better and we must treat our members better, every single member!
Regardless of when the ratings were done, these players went through a long period of time without having their ratings updated. Mr. Dunne has done an incredible job carrying on the postal chess tradition. Mike Nolan tried hard. But the problems lie solely on the shoulders of the USCF as an organization. If we collect dues and entry fees, we must give our members what they paid for.
Mr. Paul Truong, Mr. Mikhail Korenman, Mr. Randy Bauer and I are committed to change the USCF for the better. Thank you Mr. Allard for bringing this to our attention!
Rather than simply say we must “do better” with no specifics, perhaps Susan or one of her people should investigate this, determine what the problem is, and say what they would do to rectify the situation.
What do you want her or her team to do? They’re not elected yet and the old guards will protect their turf. You want things to be fixed? Elect her and her team. Then we all can hold her and her team accountable if they don’t do their job. But the problems now lie on the shoulders of this board. The USCF lost money and business goes on as usual. Nothing will change if we keep on electing the same people.
I support Susan Polgar, Paul Truong, Mikhail Korenman and Randy Bauer.
Well, if she is going to make this an issue in her campaign and imply that if elected she will do something about it, it would behoove her to find out a few basic facts about what the problem is, what is causing it, and what can be done about it.
What is causing it? The incompetence of the current chess politians. If you want the same problems year after year vote for the same people. If you want serious and positive changes, vote for Polgar and her team.
Very sad. Everyone talks about how the USCF has difficulty retaining adult members. I would guess the postal chess population is more adult in age. People may just say forget it and go to a site like queenalice.com!
Go Susan! We need to clean up the USCF now!
Postal chess is a dinosaur and a relic from the past.
Deal.
If there are 3000 people with postal chess ratings in the USCF, and all of them have paid $41 for memberships, that is $123,000 of revenue from that group.
Two thirds of that revenue, like all USCF revenue, goes for the magazine, which these 3000 people all receive whether they want it or not. Subtract some more for overhead, “governance”, etc, and programs that all USCF members support whether they wish to or not.
That probably doesn’t leave a lot of money. The USCF isn’t a huge organization but it is big enough that a group of 3000 expecting distinctive services might be too small to get attention very quickly.
If USCF services were available a la carte, and people could buy postal chess rating services, say (and not the magazine, or an OTB rating), the USCF might be able to determine that some specific portion of its revenue should be apportioned for postal chess services. But they don’t have that kind of a system.
For some reason which we don’t know, the previous postal rating system is broken, and it apparently isn’t so easy to fix it. (Or perhaps it isn’t a priority.)
It would be useful to have a bit more information before grandstanding on this issue or drawing the conclusion that it shows incompetence, etc.
dr. kodos – it takes a washed up old relic to reconize one.
I’m a regular postal player (well, it’s email, these days) and I can sympathize with Mr. Allard’s complaints. My rating is almost a year out of date, and I won’t enter another section until it’s caught up, because I don’t want to enter at the wrong level. In other words, the USCF is losing my money because of this.
However, I do want to point out a couple of things Mr. Allard doesn’t mention in his letter: first, Alex Dunne, the CC “tournament director” has been giving regular updates on the rating problem in his monthly newsletter, “The check is in the mail.” In the most recent one (IIRC), he reported that he was caught up with inputting tournament results (or very close to all caught up). What’s needed now, I gather, is a program to calculate the ratings.
And that’s the second point: Mike Nolan has been giving semi-regular updates on the CC ratings problem from the programmer’s end on the USCF bulletin boards. I posted there just yesterday asking for an new update. We’ll see what he has to say. My hope is that the problem will be fixed Real Soon Now(tm), since I’d like to start playing again! :/
One thing I’ve never understood about USCF –and this problem is glaring when it comes to correspondence chess– is the failure to embrace the Internet. Play-by-mail is dying, and play-by-email involves an annoying amount of record keeping. It’s only now that some USCF CC tournaments are switching to web servers, long after ICCF has already done so. Why is USCF such a laggard when it comes to the Internet?
Anthony is correct: Alex Dunne and Mike Nolan are close to solving the rating problem. It would have been nice if the blogger (at the bottom it says it was posted by Susan Polgar) on this item would have taken the advice that GM Polgar and FM Truong have stated before: Write a polite e-mail first to get a polite answer.
That said, a web server for correspondence is long over due for the USCF.
I have enjoyed playing Correspondence/Email chess and OTB chess. I am quite disappointed that I do not yet have a CC rating, though, I have completed many times the required number needed to obtain an official rating.
GM Polgar has already stated before on this blog that she takes Correspondence Play seriously and would post material related to it if sent to her. So, she is well aware that there are a huge number of people, from all walks of life, that enjoy Email/correspondence play.
Their exists so many problems within the USCF it will take some time and a good team, if elected, for them to fix so many problems.
I am sure that GM Polgar will, if elected, attempt to address this issue.
Mr. Dunne is doing all he can to fix this problem. Yet, he is only one person and cannot work miracles. It takes a team. He has shared with me in Emails his own frustration at the slow progress of getting the new rating system up and going.
He’s done a fine job as CC Director and I’m quite sure that GM Polgar, if elected, will be happy to listen to him and other CC players as I’m sure this blog will continue if she is elected.
I’m frustrated with the slow nature of rating CC games but I have faith that it will get better.
And, on a sidenote, any person that really thinks “Correspondence Chess is dead” has a problem with this thing called “reality.” If you include the ICCF and the many nations that have active Correspondence Chess organizations, then the number of CC players is probably in the hundreds of thousands…worldwide.
So, it’s ridiculous to think it’s
“dead.” The inference from this mentality is that CC players cheat and it’s not “real” chess.
That’s just plain silly and for those of us that enjoy it.
Tim Harris
I would have thought that postal chess players, of all people, could wait for something to take a year or so to fix. That is about how long their games last.
Just to follow-up, I checked my rating at the USCF site tonight and saw that it had been updated. Finally!
So Susan posted this article and things get done right away. Hmmmm…
Things did not “get done right away.” And it is wrong to assert that only Alex Dunne (though his is the heavy workload) is the only one getting things done. Mike Nolan started the latest thread about solving the CC problems back on “Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:23 am – Post subject: Correspondence Chess update” and last updated this thread yesterday.
I am surprised that GM Polgar would start this as an issue defaming those in the USCF that are working on the problem. I would have expected her to come to the defense of Alex Dunne, Mike Nolan, and others who have the solution almost in place.
Yesterday (Friday) Mike Nolan writes, “As of early this afternoon, MSA has updated CC ratings for over 1200 correspondence players.
“Alex has results entered through around April 8th, he expects to be completely caught up over the weekend. The individual results are available at:
“http://www.uschess.org/cc/CCSearch/
“We may have more good news for correspondence players soon.”
As you can see this has been a work in progress and has been a problem that this blog did not make an issue of until it has been almost solved.
Again, I wonder why GM Polgar, as she and FM Truong have urged others in the past, did not contact Alex Dunne or Mike Nolan regarding the status of the work being accomplished.
Hello All,
I posted earlier, incorrectly, that I had not received an official Correspondence rating. Yet, just as Anthony’s rating has been updated, so has my own.
I made a post without checking all my fact and I apologize to those in the CC dept who have been, especially recently, working diligently to get the new ratings system up and going.
So, to Mr. Alex Dunne, thank you for working so hard to implement this system and to the others who have done so much to remedy this issue.
“Rome was not built in a day,” the old adage goes. But, it was built. So, now that things seem to be working smoothly (or, at least, much more smoothly in the CC Dept), let’s just go back and enjoy our games again.
I do think Mr. Dunne should have been contacted before there was a n open letter posted on this blog discussing issues about the very department that he is in charge of within the USCF. I’m sure he would have been happy to answer any questions. He’s always been quite helpful and courteous to me.
I also think his column “The Check is in the Mail” that was pulled from “Chess Life” magazine was a very poor decision on behalf of the current editorial staff.
Anyway, facts can be stubborn things and the fact is, the ratings “issue” is now very near fixed.
Respectfully,
Tim Harris