If you're familiar with the rules and have an active US Chess ID, you're eligible to participate! Players of all ages and skill levels are welcome, with participants ranging from 5 to 99 years old.

Initial Registration must be done on our website. The registration deadline for the tournament is 30 minutes before the scheduled start time. Players who register after this cutoff may receive a bye for the first round.

Inform us as soon as possible if you cannot play a round. Half-point byes are available if requested before the start of the preceding round. If not requested in time, the bye will be worth zero points. 

If there’s an odd number of players, then someone has to sit out. You’ll still get a win in the tournament, but no ratings change. Byes are given to the lowest-scoring player in the section, with the exception of players for whom it’s their first tournament or players who have a scheduled zero or half-point bye coming up. Refunds are not given or expected for byes.

Upon registration, all players will, by default, be placed into whichever tournament section corresponds with their current Monthly rating. Unrated players will, by default, be placed in the lowest section, though if evidence of higher strength can be produced, the TD is encouraged to reassign the Unrated player to a more fitting section. In similar manner, players who are approved to play up will be reassigned to the section above their normal rating bracket.

For Scholastic tournaments, play-up ability is more limited, as grade groupings cannot be mixed. In these tournaments, playing up is possible only when a player is playing up to a section of the players same grade grouping. For pairing purposes within sections, all tournaments will still use Monthly ratings, with any anomalous exceptions falling under TD discretion.

Playing Up: You may request to compete in a higher section for an additional fee if you meet the criteria below.

1 ) If either your Monthly or Live (or even Provisional) rating is within 150 points of the floor of the section above you, then you qualify to play up. Furthermore, if your Live/Provisional actually meets or exceeds the next section’s floor, you can play up without paying a fee at all.

- Example A: If you want to play in an 1800+ section, and your Monthly rating is 1620, but your Live rating is 1739... then you are eligible to play up, because even though your Monthly rating is not in the 150-point range, your Live rating is!
- Example B: If you want to play in an 1800+ section, and your Monthly rating is 1620, but your Live rating is 1647... then you’re not yet eligible to play up, because neither your Monthly rating nor your Live rating are quite in the 150-point range yet. But who knows, maybe just one more tourney will get your Live rating over the hump in time for the next one!
- Example C: If you want to play in an 1800+ section and your Monthly rating is 1620, but your Live rating is 1809... then you’re eligible to play up with no fee at all, because you’ve already earned the 1800+ privilege directly on the chessboard!

2) If you don’t have a USCF rating yet, but you do have a FIDE rating or substantiated online chess rating, you can request to play up based on that alternate rating, provided that it is reasonably correlated with the section that you’re seeking. (The FIDE conversion formula we use is [USCF = (-1073 + 1.5667*FIDE if FIDE ≤ 2000) OR (20 + 1.02 × FIDE if FIDE > 2000)].

To get a US chess rating, you must first join the US Chess and obtain an ID. Your initial rating will be provisional and will become stable after you have played at least 25 rated games.