MSA contains up-to-date records on US Chess members and their tournament activity. Membership information is being updated in real time. so MSA should match internal membership records. Tournaments and rating information will show rated events through the last tournament rating cycle, which at present is usually scheduled to run hourly from about 10AM to midnight central time.

To search for a member, enter the member's Member ID or name.

Partial names can be entered. For example, entering 'SMITH' (without the quotes) will find all members with a last name of SMITH, plus those with a last name of SMITHFIELD, etc. Member name searches are not case sensitive, 'smith', 'Smith' and 'SMITH' will all generate the same search.

You can search for both last and first names by separating the last name and first name with a comma.

'SMITH, L' will find all records where the last name begins with SMITH and the first name begins with the letter 'L'.

To search for just a first name, begin with a comma. ',BORIS' will find all members with a first name of BORIS.

Searches generally match starting with the first letter of the member's first or last name. You can, however, use '%' as a wild card to match previous characters.

'%WHITE' will find everyone with a last name that starts with WHITE, plus last names such as APPLEWHITE, etc.

Wild card searches or ones with only a few characters may generate very long searches. The more specific you can make the search the faster it will run.

Most name searches will produce a list of matching names. There may be more than one member with the same or a similar name. Click on the line you want to select. This will display the member's name, state or country and membership expiration date, along with the member's current and last published ratings.

There are tabs to display rating supplement history, tournament activity, and tournament directing activity for the member being displayed. These records go back to around late 1991.

The 'last published rating' shown for a member will be from the most recent rating supplement that has been produced by the US Chess office, even if that supplement is not yet in effect for tournament use. To find an earlier published rating, use the Rtg. Supp. tab.

To search for a club or affiliate, enter the club or affiliate Affiliate ID or a partial name. As with member name searches, % can be used as a wildcard character at the beginning of the search field.

To search for a particular tournament, enter the tournament ID (a 9 digit number generated from the event ending date) or search for it by event name. As with member name searches, % can be used as a wildcard character at the beginning of the search field.

You can enter a date value (yymmdd) to search for all events that ended on a particular date.

As of 9/29/03 MSA has been moved to the production server and is in its initial public release. There may still be some problems with both the data and the programming. Daily updates of all information should be functioning in early October.

Please report errors and problems to [email protected]  Thank you!