Quote Originally Posted by Fred McKim View Post
Way back when, we had the Tournament Director & Organizer Certification Program (TDOCP). We had an actual test, but again long time ago.

Again, volunteer work is needed, but a simple 20 question test could be designed along with some on the job experience under the eye of a CTD should get someone certified.
We have to be more comprehensive then that. Objective questions are automatically marked by the software without any human intervention. I could easily make those questions. The software uses a questions bank that can contains many more questions then what is required. This is important in case a candidate has to redo the test. Nobody should take twice the same test but some question will always repeat.

Despite the software, a human eye should check each test for gross errors. An applicant in France has been failed despite an above 80% grade because he did not know that: the game is lost if the time limit has been exceeded, improperly supervised blitz and rapidplay use different rules, touching pieces outside of the chessboard does not force the player to promote to this piece and one more atrocity that I have forgotten. The software can give negative grade to some answers, this could help.

There should be 4 level with roughly the following content

Level 1 Basic rules and Basic administrative skills (tiebreak, price sharing, round robin pairings...)

Level 2 Swiss paring, bring your laptop and a FIDE endorsed pairing software.

Level 3 FIDE tournaments, FIDE rating, FIDE Norm

Level 4, experience in national tournaments