Yes, but there is no database (other than, possibly, a stack of hard copies) for players with US Chess ratings before 1991 and nothing since.
It is highly unlikely that office staff would look through such a “database” unless they were alerted ahead of time.
Bill Smythe
I’m not sure exactly who you asked, or exactly what you asked, but there is logic in the computer system to search all available online records (about 950,000 of them) for new members to see if they already have an ID.
But it can only find a record that matches up with the new ID on multiple factors (name, birthdate, address). If it was Jimmy Jones from Piscataway NJ 20 years ago but now it is James Jones from Brooklyn, it most likely wouldn’t be flagged as a possible duplicate ID. (And if either TD gives us an incorrect mailing address or birthdate, then that makes the matching process less likely to succeed.)
There were thousands of member records that were purged from the computer system in the 80’s and 90’s and thousands more from before 1977 that were never computerized and only exist on the microfilm copies of the old ratings cards. Unless the office is alerted to look through paper copies of old rating supplements or microfilm records manually, they won’t be checked.
And even if they did, for the reasons that Mike points out in the immediately prior post, they might not/would not find a match.
And just which of the six people in the office should stop what they are doing now to do that - or how much should we spend to hire additional team members to do such?
If somebody at the office told you that, for new members, “all databases are searched”, they must have meant that all available electronic databases are searched. This would surely include FIDE, and may also include some other national federations’ rating lists. Maybe even some of the online services with their own ratings, and maybe some state- and region-based services like NWSRS.
Surely it would not include old rating cards, whether on microfiche or not, nor would it include various wacko systems that somebody might have developed.
As to “available”, I suppose availability is determined by whether anybody in the office found it worthwhile to dig it up.
Bill Smythe
We can only initialize someone’s US Chess rating based on that player’s FIDE rating if we know that person has a FIDE ID and have that ID In the member record. Probably about half of the time that occurs after the event, but because of rerating it means we get it initialized properly–eventually.
In the mid-70’s, 1900’s were Gods.