Sunil Weeramantry (born September 11, 1951) is a Sri Lankan and American
chess player
This list of chess players includes people who are primarily known as chess players and have an article on the English Wikipedia.
A
* Jacob Aagaard (Denmark, Scotland, born 1973)
* Manuel Aaron (India, born 1935)
* Nijat Abasov (Azerbaijan, bor ...
, trainer and author known for being the trainer of his stepson
Weeramantry became a chess master at the age of 15. He represented Sri Lanka in 1978, 2004, and 2006 at the
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in FIDE Onli ...
. He won the New York State Chess Championship in 1975 and again in 2001. He was inducted into the New York State Chess Hall of Fame in 1996.
Weeramantry started his chess teaching career in 1979 at
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...
Campus Schools in Upper Manhattan. To mark the program’s 40th anniversary, in 2019 Sunil was recognized with proclamations from New York State Senator Elizabeth Krueger and New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Sunil developed chess programs for White Plains Public Schools beginning in 1984. He founded the National Scholastic Chess Foundation in 1990 and rolled his schools' programs into the new foundation. Since then, the NSCF has grown to serve more than 60 schools in the New York area, offer community programs in south Florida, and provide teacher training across the United States.
Sunil is also one of the most successful chess coaches in the United States. He has coached over 80 individual and team champions in national scholastic tournaments organized by the USCF.
Sunil served as the chairman of the
United States Chess Federation
The United States Chess Federation (also known as US Chess or USCF) is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in FIDE, The World Chess Federation (FIDE). USCF administers the official national Chess ...
's committee on Chess in Education. He has been an appointed member of the USCF Scholastic Committee from 1986 to the present and has served multiple two-year terms as the committee chair. He has received several awards from US Chess in recognition of his service, including the 2020 Distinguished Service Award. In 2004, he was named the "Chess educator of the year" by
University of Texas at Dallas
The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD or UT Dallas) is a public research university in Richardson, Texas, United States. It is the northernmost institution of the University of Texas System. It was initially founded in 1961 as a private res ...
.
Writing
Weeramantry is also a chess author; with Ed Eusebi he co-authored ''Best Lessons of a Chess Coach'' by Random House (1993). This book was extensively re-written and expanded with new content and published as ''Best Lessons of a Chess Coach - Extended Edition'' by Mongoose Press (2020). ''Great Moves: Learning Chess Through History,'' (Mongoose Press, 2017) is another work he has co-authored along with Alan Abrams and Robert McLellan. The book, for middle school students through adults, teaches chess concepts in context with chess history and world history.