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The U.S. Open Championship is an open national chess championship that has been held in the United States annually since 1900. The top American player usually qualifies for the U.S. Chess Championship.
The tournament was originally the championship of the Western Chess Association, and was called the Western Open. In 1934, the Western Chess Association became the American Chess Federation and the tournament became the American Chess Federation congress. In 1939, that organization merged into the United States Chess Federation (USCF) and the tournament became the U.S. Open.
In early years the tournament was usually small, and most years play was conducted as round robin. In some years it had to be divided into preliminary and final sections. It grew larger starting in 1934, necessitating use of different formats. In 1946, the Swiss System was used for preliminary rounds, and in 1947 and subsequent years the tournament was held as a single section paired by the Swiss System.
For many years, the tournament had 12 or 13 rounds and lasted two weeks. After experimentation with various less-demanding formats, in recent years it has usually been nine rounds; the 2015 tournament was nine rounds in nine days.
Tournament participation grew through the 1950s and 1960s. Milwaukee 1953 had 181 entrants, setting a new record for the tournament. Cleveland 1957 had 184 players, and San Francisco 1961 set another attendance record with 198 players. The 1963 Open at Chicago had 266 entries, making it the largest chess tournament held in the United States to that time. The tourney was slightly smaller at Boston in 1964, with a field of 229.
The 1983 Open at Pasadena was the largest ever, at 836 official entries; it also featured the participation of Viktor Korchnoi, who had played in the last two World Championship matches.
In the 2000s, the fields were over 400 to 500 entries. The tournament began in some editions to decline both in attendance and importance, and often many winners are involved in a tie for first, especially since the mid 1990s.
The cash prizes awarded were large for their time and added to the tournament's popularity. In 1962, the entry fee was $20, with a first prize of $1,000, second prize $500, third $300, fourth $200, fifth $100, sixth through tenth $50 and eleventh through fifteenth $25. The Women's Open Champion won $200, and the women's runner-up $100. Additional cash prizes were awarded to the top women, the top junior, and for the best scores in the Expert, A, B, and C classes. The 2024 guaranteed prize fund was $60,000, with $10,000 for first place. [1]
Irina Borisivna Krush is an American chess Grandmaster. She is the only woman to earn the GM title while playing for the United States. Krush is an eight-time U.S. Women's Champion and a two-time Women's American Cup Champion.
The United States Chess Federation is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in The World Chess Federation (FIDE). USCF administers the official national rating system, awards national titles, sanctions over twenty national championships annually, and publishes two magazines: Chess Life and Chess Life Kids. The USCF was founded and incorporated in Illinois in 1939, from the merger of two older chess organizations. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its membership as of 2020 as COVID hit was 97,000; as of 2024 the membership was 112,000.
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.
A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor does not play all the other competitors. Competitors meet one-on-one in each round and are paired using a set of rules designed to ensure that each competitor plays opponents with a similar running score, but does not play the same opponent more than once. The winner is the competitor with the highest aggregate points earned in all rounds. With an even number of participants, all competitors play in each round.
The USCF Grand Prix is a set of chess tournaments for prize money rated by the United States Chess Federation. In general, a tournament must have at least $300 in guaranteed prizes to award "Grand Prix" points.
The European Team Championship is an international team chess event, eligible for the participation of European nations whose chess federations are located in zones 1.1 to 1.9. This more or less accords with the wider definition of Europe used in other events such as the Eurovision Song Contest and includes Israel, Russia and the former Soviet States. The competition is run under the auspices of the European Chess Union (ECU).
The 38th Chess Olympiad, organized by FIDE and comprising an open and a women's tournament, as well as several other events designed to promote the game of chess, took place from 12 to 25 November 2008 in Dresden, Germany. There were 146 teams in the open event and 111 in the women's event. In total, 1277 players were registered.
The U.S. Women's Open Championship is an open chess tournament that has been held irregularly. From 1934 through at least 1966 it was held in conjunction with the annual U.S. Open Chess Championship. After some years of inactivity, the event was reinstituted in 2009.
The Canadian Open Chess Championship is Canada's Open chess championship, first held in 1956, and held annually since 1973, usually in mid-summer. It is organized by the Chess Federation of Canada. The event celebrated its 50th rendition in 2013.
Robert Lee Hess is an American chess player who received the FIDE title of Grandmaster (GM) in 2009. In May 2012, his FIDE rating was 2635, fifth in the United States. Hess is a commentator for Chess.com, covering events such as the World Chess Championship and Candidates Tournament. He also streams chess content on his Twitch channel GMHess, which has 73,000+ followers.
The World Blitz Chess Championship is a chess tournament held to determine the world champion in chess played under blitz time controls. Since 2012, FIDE has held an annual joint rapid and blitz chess tournament and billed it as the World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championships. The current world blitz champion is the Norwegian Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. Valentina Gunina from Russia is the current women's blitz world champion. Magnus Carlsen has won the event a record seven times.
The Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship is the foremost intercollegiate team chess championship in the Americas. Hosted in part by the United States Chess Federation, the Pan-Am Intercollegiate is open to any team comprising four players and up to two alternates from the same post-secondary school in North America, Central America, South America, or the Caribbean. The Pan-Am began as such in 1946, and is held annually, usually December 27–30. It has usually been held in the United States, but was hosted in Canada four times. The current format is a six-round fixed-roster team Swiss-system tournament scored by team points. Sometimes the Pan Am Intercollegiate is held as part of a larger event called the Pan American Chess Championship comprising the Pan-Am Intercollegiate, Pan-Am Scholastic Team Championship, and Pan-Am Open.
The Dallas Chess Club (DCC) is one of the major chess organizations in the United States and a gold affiliate of the United States Chess Federation. The club has approximately 300 members, including a number of FIDE titled players such as: Grandmaster Alejandro Ramírez, GM Amon Simutowe, IM Jacek Stopa, IM Marko Zivanic, IM John Bartholomew, IM Robert Sanchez, IM Keaton Kiewra, FM Keith Hayward, GM Darwin Yang, FM Tommy He, and WIM Sarah Chiang. There are also a number of US Chess masters such as: Dion Su, Mihail Bantic, Austen Green, Jimmy Heiserman, Adarsh Jayakumar, Nelson Lopez, Jarod Pamatmat, and Abhishek Mallela. International Master (IM) Stopa is the club's most prominent member, as he tied for first place at the US Open in Indianapolis in August, 2009. James T. Campion directed the club for many years from old East Dallas. Historically, the club's most famous member was Ken Smith for whom the Smith-Morra Gambit is co-named, and the DCC hosts an annual tournament in his honor. In 2010, DCC hosted the state chess tournament.
Shinsaku Uesugi is a Japanese chess player who holds the title of FIDE master. He won the 40th Japanese Chess Championship in May 2007 and became the youngest ever national champion. He also played for Japan at the 38th Chess Olympiad in November 2008 and became co-champion of the U.S. National High School Championship in April 2010.
Sharon Ellen Burtman is an American chess player. Her titles include National Master (1994); Woman International Master (1989); New England Women's Champion (1988); and United States Women's Champion.
Samuel L. Shankland is an American chess grandmaster. He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 2018.
The 2012 World Mind Sports Games were held in Lille, France, from 9 to 23 August 2012. The meeting started during the 2012 Summer Olympics and ending shortly before the 2012 Summer Paralympics, both in London. This was the second rendition of the World Mind Sports Games, which was inaugurated in 2008 in Beijing. The mind sport games had about 2000 players from 95 nations—down from 2,763 competitors and 143 countries at the 1st Games. More than half of the gold medals were contested at draughts and Russia, with the strongest draughts squad, won the most gold and most overall medals. China won five gold medals—all five events contested at Xiangqi. Chinese Taipei won four gold medals—four of the five events contested at go.
Alisa Melekhina is one of the top female chess players in the United States, a classically trained ballerina, and an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Drexel University.
Jay Richard Bonin is an American International Master in chess, chess teacher, author and lecturer. He is known as the "Iron Man of Chess" and is among the most active tournament players in the US, having played over 25,000 tournament games.
Mackenzie "Mac" Molner is an American chess grandmaster and chess instructor. Chess coach Michael Khodarkovsky helped Molner develop his competitive chess play. Molner won the Denker Tournament of High School Champions as a sophomore in 2004. He completed his final grandmaster norm in 2013, tying for first in the U.S. Open Chess Championship, held near Madison, Wisconsin that year.
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