100,000 square feet in a former Chess City of the Year.
We’re going to make the USCF office respect us yet!
Now can you pair that up with enough affordable sleeping rooms to handle the event that are close enough to the convention center to not require a fleet of buses? Convention centers that aren’t part of hotels tend to want serious $$$ for their space, too.
How many flights are there per day into the nearest major airport?
I sent them the lead. I am sure Knoxville and Lubbock have great air service.
Just for the record, the Rochester metro has a million people. It isn’t that small.
We might have to check this out with Meeting Link to see if they can give us a special rate.
Steve, you can put that in your signature.
I’m ordering a special cell phone with a Texas area code. Then I know the office will return my communications…
Have you ever been a part of a National Scholastic event? Do you have any idea of the logistical requirements? So you realize how many people will not travel to the Northeast, while NY players will in fact travel to play?
The NYA is being bid out. It went to Brownsville because they bid for it. It went to Chicago because they bid for it. You want to put it in upstate NY then bid for it.
You do realize that the USCF has not sponsored an event in Lubbock in some time. Ms. Polgar’s SPICE events are not USCF sponsored.
There has not been a national in Knoxville in some time. Where those bid events or office organized?
Events in the central part of the country do benefit from a relative ease in driving to them for many of the participants.
I think there have been just two national scholastics in Knoxville, the HS in 1989 (corrected) and the Elementary in 1992. Neither was organized by the USCF. I think Pat Knight was the chief organizer of the 1992 Elementary, but that was a good 12 years before she became a USCF employee.
OK, now, in addition to seeing all the states ranked by USCF membership per capita, I also want to find out where the U.S. chess “center of gravity” is – the average latitude and longitude of every USCF member’s ZIP code.
We were told when the National Office moved from NY it was because “we get everything.” The President of USCF even said so in the annual report.
Obviously, that has now been proven false, and there is now blatant favortism toward two southern states, Texas and Tennessee, in the bidding of national events organized by the office (and they organize them).
The response? Drop dead Yankee. Just keep buying your Southwest Airlines tickets to support us and our tournaments, forever.
It says a lot when they expect us to travel down south year after after, and when we ask for one return trip, the answer is “ain’t happening.”
If I ignore Alaska and Hawaiii and look just at the 48 states and DC, the population center of the adult membership is about 70 miles SW of Saint Louis MO.
If I look just at the scholastic and youth membership, then the population center is about 50 miles further east and 100 miles further south, or about 150 miles due south of Saint Louis MO.
To clarify, not to disagree, the HS in Knoxville was in 1989. I played.
Alex Relyea
The Supernationals were held in Knoxville in 1997, so the actual number of National Scholastics there would be five.
I am certainly looking forward to the day the third-largest city in New York (still Rochester) can say they “only” had five National Scholastic chess tournaments.
Can’t USCF at least get a sponsorship deal with Southwest? If you were a National Scholastic player in the 2000’s, you probably spent more time in Southwest’s Dallas hub than Davy Crockett spent at the Alamo!
No wonder the St. Louis Chess Center is such a hit!
I’m in favor of letting them run everything. 
BTW. according to the census bureau, the population center of the United States is also in Missouri, as it has been since the 1980 census.
The 2010 center of population probably won’t be a lot different. The recession put a significant dent in the growth of areas on the edges of the country like south Florida, Nevada, Arizona and south Texas.
I had thought before attending the Nationals in Dallas a couple of weeks ago that the TX kids had an advantage, but then I realized that might not be so true. True, they won’t have to travel a few hours to get to the site, but if you arrive the day before the tournament there’s really no jet lag by the next day. And coming from NY, there was only a 1 hour time zone shift (the west coast kids had more of an issue with this). But the big thing to me was that if a kid lived in Dallas or a suburb, they most likely had to drive 30-45 minutes to the tournament site. That meant they got to wake up in their own bed, but they didn’t have a place to go to between rounds, and also had to get up earlier on Saturday and Sunday morning than kids staying in the hotel, and got home later on Friday and Saturday night. This is not trivial. In fact, at least one kid from Dallas we met was staying at the hotel for precisely these reasons.
The hotel itself was the best of any Nationals I’ve been to (this was our fifth one). The food situation was not a problem, the elevators were efficient, no room was too long a walk from the tournament, and the rooms were beautiful and spacious. The only minor complaint was that they didn’t have a way for the kids to go to the bathroom without walking by spectators which could lead to accusations of cheating. Also, the flights were smooth and on time for a change.
While I’d obviously like it if they had a Nationals tournament in the NY area, there could easily be problems that the Dallas Anatole didn’t have, so we left happy and looking forward to returning.