Special College Chess League

2nd Annual College Chess League Tournament starts on Sunday, February 24th
www.collegechessleague.com

Dear college chess enthusiasts,

We are having our 2nd annual spring team event and we are hopeful to attract 45-50 college teams to the event. This should be a realistic and attainable goal as last year, in our inaugural event; we had 37 teams play in the College Chess League Tournament. Furthermore, this fall, we had over 112 individual players take part in our first individual event. We are looking forward to exciting play.

There are a wide variety of colleges that will be playing. From the perennial powerhouses such as the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), all the way down to the two year community college JV teams, your club should find equally matched play. Your club does not have to be strong to play in this event; it is for everyone in our college community. There is no cost to play in the event, and for the 2nd year, the Internet Chess Club has graciously offered to provide your students with free ICC accounts. This league will be played online during Sunday afternoons, and while we encourage the teams to get together in a facility to play; it is not required—and the students may play from their own home if need be.

If there are over 40 teams that sign up, we are considering breaking the league into two parts; a Pacific League, and an Atlantic League. We will try to break the teams evenly between the two leagues in order to achieve better regional competition as well as having more chances to finish strong in the league. We are currently looking for sponsors for different awards, and are seeking free over the board prizes for the winners in different categories. Last year, during the individual event, we were able to offer the winners in different categories a choice to play for free in an over the board USCF event. It is our mission to try to create am active college community, and also try to encourage the students to play in various USCF over the board events. We hope that by having an online league accessible to everyone, it will in time promote our collegiate over the board tournaments.

The tournament will be a 4 round Swiss Team Tournament, and if we break the league into two parts (an Atlantic and Pacific), we will have a head to head playoff system to determine the overall winner. The tournament will be directed by Jon Haskel, who has vast experience directing chess tournaments and events. Jon is also recognized by the USCF, as well as FIDE where he is a titled ‘FIDE International Organizer’. His expertise will ensure that the tournament is held on schedule, and is run smoothly. To schedule is posted at http://www.tatiana.net/iccl/index.cfm?page=schedule.

If you are considering joining the league, prior to registering, please take the time and read this carefully.

First of all, Please review the rules carefully
http://www.tatiana.net/iccl/index.cfm?page=generalRules

Sign up on our email list at http://www.tatiana.net/iccl/index.cfm?page=register

Find out who your players and team captains will be.
Only students and graduate students can play.
Each team contains 5 players, and up to 4 alternates.
You can have up to 2 teams per registration.
If you have more than 2 teams, you can register a new team using a different university name (see below)
Determine all of the players email addresses and approximate USCF rating. If you do not specify the correct email address, your player will not receive an invite, and will not be able to confirm the invitation to play.

Determine your board order by the strength of the player.

A If you don’t currently have a CCL team account, please register your team at http://www.tatiana.net/iccl/index.cfm?page=register and follow the directions provided.

B If you have a CCL account from a prior tournament and remember the user credentials, please log-in and adjust your team board order, and remove inactive players prior to registering. After adjusting your team board order, you must register your team for this tournament.

If you forgot your user credentials, or if someone else set up your CCL account, you can specify new user credentials and register your team again at
http://www.tatiana.net/iccl/index.cfm?page=register.

If you have more than 2 teams, please register twice using a different university name (i.e. University of Washington A, and University of Washington B).
After registration, the CCL application will automatically send an email to all of the players on your team.

After team registration students should:
· Communicate actively with the TD
· Register for a free CCL account
· Sign up for a temp 7-day ICC account if you don’t have one
· Sign up for a permanent ICC account (although not required)

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Gregory at Gregory@tatiana.net.

Thank-you!

Sincerely,

On behalf of the USCF College Committee,

Gregory Alexander
USCF College Committee Associate Chair, CCL webmaster
Gregory@tatiana.net