We’re number 1290!

I just learned, courtesy of Bill Brock’s Chicago Chess Blog, that the USCF member pages have added another new wrinkle: a line that indicates your ranking in the whole country. My current rating is 2093  🙁 . That puts me at #1290 in the country, which is actually better than I would have expected. However, the ranking only includes players who have been active in the last twelve months. So it’s #1290 out of 47,241 — not out of the entire membership base.

Naturally I would like to get back into the top 1000, which currently requires a rating of 2139. To crack the top 500, it looks as if I would need a rating of 2230, or perhaps 2231. Mike Splane, a regular reader of this blog, is just on the cusp of the top 500, with a rating of 2229 (national ranking of #506).

If you’re a junior, you can also find out your ranking among juniors in the country. I was quite surprised to find out that 73 percent of the active players in the country are juniors! A more depressing viewpoint is that of the 47,000-plus active chess players in the country, only a little more than 12,000 or so are grownups. I wonder if there will come a day when chess in this country is exclusively played by people under 21 …

Finally, you can also find out your ranking within your state. According to my member page, I’m number 92 in northern California (which is treated as a separate state from southern California). However, according to the top-200 list for the state, I’m number 87. Why the difference? Well, the top-200 list is based on published ratings, which are only updated once a month, while the member page seems to be updated a lot more frequently. (In fact, within the last hour I dropped from #91 to #92! Jeez, I’d better get busy.)

Just for fun, here is the current top-10 list in northern California, along with my lifetime record against them.

I’m a little surprised, first of all, that I have actually played 9 of the top 10 players in northern California, and also that I’ve done so well. My overall record against the top 10 is 35 percent (4½-8½), which I think is better than I would normally be expected to do against this opposition.

This table raises one more question: Who is Sevan Buscara? It turns out that he is a 19-year-old French citizen with a FIDE rating of 2259. He has played two USCF-rated tournaments, both of them this year, so his USCF rating is actually only a provisional rating based on 10 games. He has won 9 out of 10 games in this country, with his only loss coming to Ricardo de Guzman. One could argue that he is not really a northern California player — at least not an established one. If we take him off the list and put the #11 player, John Donaldson, in his place, then I am a perfect 10 for 10! I have played all of the top 10 players with established ratings in northern California! My record against John is ½-1½, so this addition lowers my lifetime record against the top 10 to 5-10 (33 percent), with 3 wins, 4 draws, and 8 losses.