The Manhattan Chess Club in Manhattan was the second-oldest chess club in the United States (next to the Mechanics' Institute Chess Club in San Francisco) before it closed. The club was founded in 1877 and started with three dozen men, eventually increasing to hundreds, with women allowed as members from 1938. The club moved to several locations over the years. [1] It closed in 2002. [1]
The club organized the New York international tournaments of 1924 (won by Emanuel Lasker) and 1927 (won by José Capablanca), [2] frequently hosted rounds of the U.S. Chess Championship starting in the 1930s, [2] and was the site of two World Championship matches in 1886 and 1891. [3]
The club's own championships were some of the strongest tournaments in the United States (Frank Marshall and Isaac Kashdan, both grandmasters, won the championship thrice). Notable participants include Géza Maróczy, who played in several championships and won the Manhattan CC Championship in 1927, Abraham Kupchik, who won the club championship eleven times, Arthur Bisguier, who won seven times, Alexander Kevitz, Arnold Denker, and Walter Shipman, who won six times each, and David Graham Baird and Pal Benko, who won five times each. [4]
Players who developed their skills at the club include Arnold Denker, Arthur Feuerstein, Bobby Fischer, I. A. Horowitz, William Lombardy, Samuel Reshevsky, and Gata Kamsky, who played in numerous tournaments at the club after his defection from the Soviet Union at the 1989 New York Open. In 1970 Fischer played in a blitz tournament organised by the club, scoring 21½/22. [5] Noted midwestern chess master Billy Colias managed the club before his death in 1993. [6] [7]
Former world chess champion José Raúl Capablanca was watching a casual game in the club on 7 March 1942 when he suffered a stroke; he died the next day. [2]
The book entitled, The Bobby Fischer I Knew And Other Stories, by Denker and Larry Parr, contains many stories about the Manhattan Chess Club.
Prior to the advent of internet chess, the club was a primary hub for elite New York City chess and chess tournaments. Its "Four Rated Games Tonight" Thursday evening tournaments in the late 1980s drew large fields that included many titled players, and its overnight "insanity" tournaments, held a few times a year, drew dozens of Saturday night-owls and finished well after dawn on Sunday. Its location on the Tenth Floor of Carnegie Hall was always bustling.
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José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. A chess prodigy, he is widely renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play.
The US Chess Championship is an invitational tournament organized by the United States Chess Federation to determine the country's chess champion. It is the oldest national chess tournament. The event originated as a challenge match in 1845, but the champion has been decided by tournament play under the auspices of the USCF since 1936. Originally, the tournament was a round-robin, before adopting its present Swiss system in 1999. From 1999 to 2006, the championship was sponsored and organized by the Seattle Chess Foundation and featured a larger body of competitors, made possible by the change in format. After the Foundation withdrew its sponsorship, the 2007 and 2008 events were held in Stillwater, Oklahoma, still as a Swiss system, under tournament director Frank K. Berry. Rex Sinquefield's Saint Louis Chess Club has hosted the championship since 2009.
Reuben C. Fine was an American chess player, psychologist, university professor, and author of many books on both chess and psychology. He was one of the strongest chess players in the world from the mid-1930s until his retirement from chess in 1951. He was granted the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1950, when titles were introduced.
Samuel Herman Reshevsky was a Polish chess prodigy and later a leading American chess grandmaster. He was a contender for the World Chess Championship from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s: he tied for third place in the 1948 World Chess Championship tournament, and tied for second in the 1953 Candidates tournament. He was an eight-time winner of the US Chess Championship, tying him with Bobby Fischer for the all-time record.
Irving Chernev was a chess player and prolific Ukrainian-American chess author. He was born in Pryluky, Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire and emigrated to the United States in 1905. Chernev was a national master-strength player and was devoted to chess. He wrote that he "probably read more about chess, and played more games than any man in history."
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Abraham Kupchik was an American chess master.
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Events in chess in 1962:
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