US Chess offers an API (application programming interface) that allows programs such as WinTD to access information on an individual player through their ID. The advantage that this has over the main US Chess Database is that the expiration date and membership status information is being updated much more frequently while the downloaded database only has that as of the time when the database was generated.

 

Note that the rating information on this will be the same as ratings on the official database for the current month—"web ratings" from tournaments that weren't rated in time for the database are not available (and their use is generally discouraged by the rules).

 

For the selected players in a Player or Master Player window with US Chess ID's, the US Chess>Update from Web Site will access the US Chess web site and update the expiration date and membership status for any players for which those have changed. It will also update the player type/gender if US Chess shows someone as Female when your records show either NA or Male. (This information is not on the downloaded database).

 

Note that this does not update ratings—the official ratings for the month are on the database.

 

WinTD will need access to the internet for this, so (a) your computer must have a connection to the internet and (b) any firewall or similar software will need to be configured to allow WinTD to use the internet connection.

 

While the new API is much quicker than the one used prior to 2026, there is a limit on how many accesses can be made so in a large tournament or master file, you should restrict yourself to updating players that have expired ID's. (You can sort the window by expiration date to make it easy to select only those players).

 

If there is a player who has a "not a member" status, you will get an alert indicating a problem. This can be a duplicate ID, or if the player is shown as "active", they have only played in JTP events and thus have never needed to join.

 

Copyright © 2026 Thomas Doan