Mysterious and incorrect age changes in USCF records

Running Chess Tournaments
1

I am curious about the increasing number of existing members whose age mysteriously changes during or after a membership payment transaction. The only way to tell this is by looking at the top 100 lists. Let me cite three examples from the October top 100 lists:

  • 12346790 appears on the age 17 list. I played him at the 2005 Pacific Coast Open and I am pretty sure that he is not 17. In fact, he is probably in his 50s. He told me that he had not played a tournament for 20+ years.

  • 12682225 is a student of mine. I positively assert that he is not 17 until late October, yet he appears on the October 2006 age 17 list. More curiously, a year ago he appeared on the age 15 list. I know he is a remarkable young man, but I don’t think he aged 2 years in 12 months.

  • 12892064 appears on the age 7&under list with an age of 1. Very impressive! More impressively, he has been playing tournament chess for over a year now.

This raises two questions:

  • How can someone change their age so easily? In all three examples, the new age is clearly incorrect and the old age was (probably) correct. Was it a data entry mistake?

  • What happens if a third party reports that someone’s age is incorrect? Certainly the USCF office doesn’t automatically take that person’s word because that leaves room for abuse. I did ask my student to contact the USCF office himself, but what standing do I have to complain about the other two cases?

Michael Aigner

2

Was this a case where there are two people with the same name? If so then it is a membership number problem rather than a changing age problem.

In this case there are two different IDs for the same name (one is listed as duplicate and subscription only and starting with 128). Since the supplement and supplement databases do not list ages or addresses, only looking at the membership card (assuming it was being carried) would definitively clear up the confusion.

If he hadn’t played in over 20 years I have to wonder if the TD simply pulled up his name from the supplement database and used it without realizing that it was a different person and that the correct person might not actually be in the database.

I didn’t initially think IDs from 20 years ago were already starting with 123. The 127s were being assigned in 1998 and the 130s in 2004, so at that rate the 123s would be in the very rough vicinity of 1990, which would be really pushing it for a 17-year-old, but which is still just barely possible (though not necessarily feasible). Based on that a 123 starting number wouldn’t seem to be early enough for a person playing in the early 80s. If we were burning through numbers at a slower rate in the 80s than we used to around the turn of the century, then the 123 numbers could be older than 1990 (I anticipate a few responses correcting my very rough estimate, but I’m not sure which direction the correction will be).

During the JTP period with the starting 20 numbers, the rate of assigning regular numbers probably DID slow, making it more likely that the 123 number actually was assigned in the early 80s.

During some periods, the numbers were not being assigned for every digit, and if the early to mid 90s was one such period then it is more likely that the 123 number was actually assigned in the mid 90s.

Mike Nolan might be able to state when the 123 numbers were being assigned.

3

I am 12595730 and I became a USCF member in April 1993. It is likely that the 123s are from the late 1980s, which means that my opponent’s estimate of “more than 20 years” is incorrect, but not by that much.

4

My number is 12483626 and I first joined in either late 1987 or early 1988.

I would say that the 20 year estimate for 123***** is pretty accurate.

5

We don’t have very detailed records for when someone first became a USCF member if that was before 1992. (From 1992 on we can use the rating supplement files to get us within a few months of when most IDs were assigned.)

Based on an analysis of the expiration dates for the members in that ID range that we have, it looks like ID numbers in the range of 1234XXXX were probably being assigned in early 1983.

It also looks like the birthdate on ID 12346790 was changed as a result of a webstore renewal in July of last year. This ID is also noted as having a duplicate ID of 12821538, though this is the ID that is considered active.

Whether EITHER of those IDs is the right one for this player is a different subject.

I’ve restored the earlier birthdate, which makes this player considerably older than 17. This membership has lapsed, so I don’t know if it is worthwhile to try to contact him to confirm his birthdate.

On ID 12682225, the birth year was changed last November, I don’t know which is correct.

On 12892064, the birth year was changed in a webstore transaction last May, I’ve restored the earlier birth year. (Using the current year instead of the birth year is probably the most common error in birthdates. The new membership webstore, which went live last September, has better ‘sanity checks’ for birthdate changes than the old one did.)

As I noted in a post a couple of days ago, nearly every set of Top 100 lists has at least one person listed as a result of an incorrect birthdate or under the wrong sex. About the best we can do is try to catch them as they’re pointed out. (There are 21 different Top 100 lists with age-based eligiblity, there’s no practical way to check ALL of them every time.)

We are working on a procedure which will tell us whether someone’s birthdate or sex has been changed since the last set of Top 100 lists was issued, so the office will know to double-check that player’s eligibility for age-based lists. Hopefully that way we’ll only have to check someone’s birhdate or sex ONCE!

Beyond that, if you have information about an incorrect birthdate, please email that information to jmisner@uschess.org

6

Weren’t checkdigits introduced at some point, so that the last digit of an ID number is now merely a check on the first 7? If so, ID numbers are now being used up at 10 times the rate they were before. This could throw off, considerably, estimates as to which ID numbers began to be used in which years.

Bill Smythe

7

Check digits were introduced in July of 2004, so that won’t affect estimating when ID numbers were issued 20 or more years ago

8

Mine is 12313120, I joined in the Summer of 1980.