Quick question. How do I reset my USCF rating as if I never joined the USCF. In other words, start from scratch? I haven’t played a rated game since 2009. It wouldn’t be fair to my opponents by taking huge amounts of rating points from them…
Quick answer. There is no reset to unrated.
The moderators will probably move this because it is way off topic for the Forum names thread.
This topic is a spin-off from What’s in a (Forums) name?.
I think in extreme cases, the USCF will lower or remove your rating floor. But I’d think it’s reserved for members that have had some sort of traumatic brain injury, brain tumor/cancer, or brain surgery that would significantly alter a person’s ability to play chess.
In any event, in my opinion, your better off just grinding up your USCF rating. By resetting to unrated, you’d get huge swings where one loss can cause your rating to plummet. Plus if I recall, you need to play like 20 games I think to get out of probationary rating.
(Correct me if I’m wrong about the number of games, it’s been many years since I played in a OTB tournament.)
It’s not like online play where the RD gets bigger the longer you play between rated games.
Online, if you have a decent rating, but not played in a while, then lose to someone about the same level as you are, your rating can plummet by a huge amount. Then if you lose again, you still lose a lot of points, making it rather depressing trying to get back to your actual strength.
Edit: I wanted to add that ratings are independent of each other. So if your rating swings 32 points, it doesn’t mean your opponent is going to lose 32 points. (I think. Correct me if I’m wrong.)
25 games
And you are correct - ratings loss does not necessarily equal ratings gain.
One’s rating is provisional for their first 25 USCF rated games. So, it actually takes 26 games to get an established rating.
(My apologies for the nitpick - but I didn’t want any current or potential organizers/TDs to see this unclarified.)
There are less extreme cases for which a rating floor may be adjusted downward. As I understand it, the most common cases involve players who have consistently been on their floors for a number of years, despite moderate to heavy activity.
In any event, the player has to request the lowering from the national office. The office has the right, of course, to refuse any such request.
The rating policy has been “once rated, always rated” for quite some time. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with taking time off from the game to study and improve. In any event, this isn’t ICC - you can’t buy a rating reset. (Might be a way to generate revenue, though. 
)
And destroy the integrity of the rating system in the process.
Bill Smythe
Did you read the paragraph from which you culled this one parenthetical sentence? For that matter, did you see the emoticon at the end of the sentence? It seems obvious that it was not a serious argument in favor of a rating reset. YMMV, however.
I actually thought about it though.
Please take the following with a grain of salt, a little bit of silver tongue-devil and evil fundraiser attitude all rolled up together.
Would it destroy the integrity of the rating system if someone could reset their rating a limited number of times? Let’s say, one time, for a sizeble fee, for arguments sake.
We have had, in the past, players who come back to chess after a layoff where their old rating could not be determined - and they got a reset. Has anyone ever argued that such resets destroyed the integrity of the rating system?
Wouldn’t someone eventually end up in the same rating ballpark as they would after several rated established games anyway?
I would think that the integrity of prize competition might be an issue. (Maybe a reset doesn’t entitle one to compete for a different prize category until a new rating is established.)
There is an argument that one’s opponents are impacted differently…
But hey, for a REALLY BIG FEE… 
i would think that if a player has years of playing at their floor
with frequent tournament play, then they should have the right
to ask that their floor be removed. A great friend of mine who
passed at age 80 had a floor of 1600. For years he played like
U1200 player in very frequent tournaments. Now I will say that
he was beloved for this by many emerging young players who
defeated a 1600 player for the first time. But certainly this
gentleman’s chances to win about any type of class prize was
nil.
Rob Jones
Rob Jones
A player has the right to request a lowering or removal of a rating floor at any time. The condition I described above is the most common - and most likely - reason such a request would be granted.
I never thought it was serious, on your part. I was a bit worried, however, that somebody (e.g. the OP) might latch onto the idea seriously.
Bill Smythe
This is a stretch, but according to the USCF rules on ratings let’s consider the following:
If someone is let’s say, rated 1250, studies and prepares for 3 to 5 years to get to the 2200 level. Yes, it can happen, depends on the person and so forth.
If that person wins a prize of $2,000 or more in, for example, The Millionnaire’s chess tournament, would that player’s rating jump from 1250 to let’s say 2150 in 1 day?
I guess his rating would be floored based on the section he was in. So if he was in the 2200 and under sections, that would be floored based on that.
I’m not sure, but I think rating floors based on wins isn’t based on tournament performance, but rather which section they played in.
If he won $2000+ in the open section, and his tournament average performance was say, 2200, I’m not really sure what his floor would be set at. I’d presume someone in the USCF would have a sit down and take a good look at his games/performance, then decide what his floor should be.
In any event, in your hypothetical, it would turn a LOT of heads, and the person would surely attract a lot of attention, and probably an article in Chess Life… (I’m working under the assumption the person didn’t cheat).
Although the attention on the hypothetical would be a lot, I’m sure the person would have had a much more active online chess life, so regulars of whichever chess server he frequented probably wouldn’t be so surprised, and would be giving the person a virtual High Five, as they say.
Insert “gossamer-thin” in an appropriate place.
Can it happen? Yes, of course. For a recent example, NM Advait Patel gained ~1,000 points in two years. However, it’s extremely rare, and generally limited to rapidly improving juniors without a lot of prior experience.
Can it happen without any tournament play? Possibly. However, OTB tournament play generally goes hand-in-hand with studying to produce improvement. So, this seems rather unlikely - and would probably raise a lot of eyebrows, especially if we’re talking about an adult.
There are several issues with this question.
First, USCF money floors only go up to 2000.
Second, using MC as an example, it’s not possible for a money floor to end in -50, since none of the sections do. (Some tournaments do use sections with rating bands that don’t end in -00, but it’s rare.)
Third, the floor is designed to keep the person out of the class in which he just won his $2,000+ prize. So, if the hypothetical player were to win $2,000 in the U1600 section, his money floor would be 1600. Therefore, the hypothetical player would have to win that $2,000 prize in the U2000 section to get a money floor of 2000. The odds of such a player playing that far up - when he is eligible for two other lower sections - are, to put it mildly, small.
Fourth, the rating wouldn’t jump “in one day”. The regular-rated portion of MC is a five-day event (four days for the class sections, and also four days for the 12 Open players who qualify for Millionaire Monday). This is a bit of semantics, but it’s important to note that in those four days, the TDs are watching all the sections, especially those players moving into position for prizes. The hypothetical player would certainly be heavily scrutinized.
Fifth, a player with a 1250 established rating would probably have to go something like 6.5/7 in the U2000 section (or higher) to gain 500 rating points from a single 7-round event. Even if that were to happen in the U2200, the money floor would only be 2000, which would be well above the ~1700 post-event rating the player would get.
Just play and see how far the cheap and easy rating points take you. If you need an example look at my rating graph in 2008.
Let your USCF membership expire, then after a short to long period move to a new state, and join the USCF as a new player. This actually happened about 20 years ago. The player in question then came back to Illinois to play in an event and insisted that he be entered and play as an unrated. This even though it was known he had a previous USCF rating. He actually played as an unrated, finished with 2 points, tried to claim the U1000 prize, and was told that as an unrated he didn’t qualify for the U1000 prize. Hoisted on his own petard.
Larry S. Cohen
PS: I was only a spectator at the event, not part of the TD staff. I came near the end of the event, and was able to be the person to point out that as an ‘Unrated’ he didn’t qualify for the U1000 prize.
I went from 1575 to 1947 in the 1966 U.S. Open when I was 22. There wasn’t a lot of rated chess in Montana and North Dakota in those days, and I was playing skittles regularly with Peter Lapiken (Master strength in the 50s and early 60s) and a couple of A strength players in Missoula. Won 75 bucks and a trophy in a 2 way split for class C. Money wasn’t quite the issue for class players back then.
My father often told me the story of Bob Stork. He wasn’t a particularly good player (this was pre-ratings) when he suffered an illness that laid him up for a good year. He studied chess constantly during that year. No coaches, just him and whatever literature he could lay his hands on. He recovered. And won the Washington State Championship.