ASCF: American Scholastic Chess Federation

To all Chess Emporium students and parents, and all our other wonderful customers.

Through the last 9 years we have been blessed to have our careers be more like labours of love. Teaching chess to students is something we enjoy and want to do a good job at. We have always been able to feel that we have delivered a good product.

As many of you know, the old rating service stopped making a scholastic magazine over a year ago. They now charge an annual fee just to offer a rating every other month. The last ‘supplement’ was December 2003 and included “most rating reports received by October 31, 2003”. So theoretically, Chess Emporium could run a tournament on October 17th, mail it to them on October 20th, and it might not be calculated into your students “official rating” until the February 1st 2004 ‘supplement’. 

This has resulted in our new players actually waiting 3.5 months or more to see their first rating. Even veteran players and parents have expressed frustration with the long lag between event played and rating change that we have lived with for 9 years.

Chess Emporium will be publishing a new National scholastic chess magazine 6 times a year, and offering a new, modern National scholastic rating service starting February 1st 2004. We will be rating events twice monthly, on the 1st and 15th of every month. For the first year, 2004, we will honor USCF memberships until the expiration month on your 
card for 2004. Once it expires in 2004, you will need an American Scholastic Chess Federation membership to play in our events. We will still be sending these tournaments for USCF rating this year. 

Pricing will be $28.85 for the magazine and rating service combined. The magazine will be titled The Chess Scholar. We think you will be pleased and excited with the magazine we publish. Some contributors will be IM Jeremy Silman, GM Tal Shaked, IM Nikolay Andrianov and the editor, Matt Guthrie. Your student will be able to review other kids’ games, learn new opening, middle game and endgame ideas, submit his/her own games for publication, ask questions of the coaches locally and nationally, and of course parents will have a voice.  

With the new rating service, your student will be able to look up his new rating every 15 days! We will be using the ELO rating calculation, which is used the world over, as well as by FIDE, which is the international chess rating organization.  

Please feel free to check out the new site at ASchess.org and enjoy!