How to Look Up Player Ratings and Chess Game Records on scchess.org

scchess.org hosts three separate archives you can use for research: a Player Ratings database, a Chess Games database split into year ranges, and Crosstables for past South Carolina championships. All three are linked from the site's main navigation. The games database is organized in five-year blocks from 1846 through 2011, and the crosstables are grouped by year, with the densest coverage from 2005 onward. What each archive actually contains differs, so it helps to know which one answers your question before you start clicking.

Player Ratings

The Player Ratings link is the place to start if you want a rating rather than a game. It sits in the same navigation row as the games and crosstable links, so you reach it in one click from the home page.

Two things to keep in mind:

• The site does not describe how often ratings are refreshed or which rating system (US Chess or otherwise) feeds the database. Treat any figure you find as a snapshot, not a live rating.
• If a player does not appear, the most likely explanation is that they have no recorded tournament results in the events the site has archived — not that the lookup failed.

Chess Games Database

The games are divided into these ranges:

The early ranges are the surprise here: games from 1846 onward means this is not purely a South Carolina archive. If you are researching a specific player or opening, work backward from the range that matches your date rather than scanning every block.

Crosstables for Past Championships

Crosstables are listed by year under the SC Championships section, alongside results for the Columbia Open, the SC Open, scholastic championships, and the SCISA Chess Tournament. Coverage is strongest from 2005 to 2014, where each year typically includes the championship crosstable plus separate scholastic results and crosstables.

A crosstable is the right tool when you want to know who played whom, in which round, and with what result — for example, to confirm a head-to-head record or reconstruct a player's path through an event. The games database is the right tool when you want the moves themselves.

Scholastic Results, 2005 – 2020

Scholastic chess has its own year-by-year index running from 2005 to 2020, and most years include both a Results Report and Crosstables. This is the most complete continuous series on the site. If you are a parent or coach tracking a junior player's progression, this is where the record is most likely to be intact.

Practical Tips

• Start with the year, not the name. The site is organized chronologically, so locating the event year first is faster than hunting for a player.
• Cross-check between archives. A player listed in a crosstable should also appear in the ratings database; a discrepancy usually means one archive was updated and the other was not.
• Check the championship site for current events. The home page directs readers to scchampionship.com for details on the 2026 South Carolina State Championships (October 16–18, Columbia Chess Club, 6169 St. Andrews Rd., Columbia, SC 29212). Historical archives will not reflect upcoming events.
• Use the Clubs and Links pages for context. If a crosstable references a club you do not recognize, the Clubs page may identify it and its location.

What the Archives Do Not Tell You

The site does not publish a stated update schedule, a rating methodology, or a guarantee of completeness for any year. Gaps in the record — particularly before 2005 and in the games database's earliest ranges — should be read as gaps in what was preserved, not as evidence that no chess was played. For anything you need to rely on formally, confirm against the original tournament report or the state association directly.