The Dallas Chess Club (DCC) is one of the major
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
organizations in the United States and a gold affiliate 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. US Chess administers the official national rating s ...
(US Chess, formerly USCF). The club has approximately 300 members, including a number of
FIDE
The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...
titled players such as:
Grandmaster Alejandro Ramírez, GM
Amon Simutowe
Amon Simutowe (born January 6, 1982) is a Zambian chess grandmaster. He is the first grandmaster from sub-Saharan Africa and the third black chess grandmaster in history, after Maurice Ashley and Pontus Carlsson. He holds a Bachelor of Scienc ...
,
IM Jacek Stopa, IM Marko Zivanic, IM John Bartholomew,
IM Keaton Kiewra, FM Keith Hayward, GM Darwin Yang,
FM Tommy He, and WIM Sarah Chiang. There is 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
FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...
(IM) Stopa is the club's most prominent member, as he tied for first place at the
US Open in Indianapolis during 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.
In September 2009 DCC hosted the annual
Southwest Open
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, Radius, radially arrayed compass directions (or Azimuth#In navigation, azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east ...
, which had 240 players and was won by IM Gergely Antal. The club also has several smaller tournaments every week, with approximately one hundred participants during the weekly event on Friday night. This makes DCC arguably the most active club in the United States, with more than twice as many regulars as New York's
Marshall Chess Club
The Marshall Chess Club, in Greenwich Village, New York City, is one of the oldest chess clubs in the United States. The club was formed in 1915 by a group of players led by Frank Marshall. It is a nonprofit organization and a gold affiliate o ...
. Indeed, the DCC has been described as "one of the most active chess clubs" in publications by US Chess. This sentiment is echoed in one unaffiliated chess blog which in 2008 declared the DCC to be "one of the most active clubs in the nation with over 2000 events hosted since 1991". Part of the reason for this success has been the chess program at the nearby
University of Texas at Dallas, which is helmed by Director James Stallings, team coach IM Rade Milovanovic (who tied for first in the 2008 US Open in Dallas), assistant director Luis Salinas of the DCC, and senior lecturer
Alexey Root Alexey Wilhelmina Root (née Rudolph, born 1965) is a chess player, teacher, and writer, who was the 1989 U.S. Women's Chess Champion. She holds the title of Woman International Master, and received a Ph.D. degree from UCLA.
Root is Senior Lectu ...
(a former US women's national champion). The DCC is affiliated with the UTD Team, which is the nation's top-ranking collegiate team, and regularly hosts them in tournaments. The DCC also has local affiliates in the nearby cities of
Fort Worth
Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...
,
Denton,
Lewisville, and
Plano.
DCC utilizes volunteers for club activities. Two notable volunteer TD's are Luis Salinas and Robert Jones. DCC hosted Robert Smeltzer (1930–2010), who set the world record in 1995 for playing the most
rated chess games in a single year, for a total of 2266. Smeltzer was subsequently featured on the cover of the official USCF monthly magazine, ''
Chess Life
The monthly ''Chess Life'' and bi-monthly ''Chess Life Kids'' (formerly ''School Mates'' and ''Chess Life for Kids'') are the official magazines published by the United States Chess Federation (US Chess). ''Chess Life'' is advertised as the "most ...
''. In addition, the DCC hosts a number of adolescents who are ranked among the top 10 in the world for their age, this includes CM Tommy He, Jonathan Chiang, WCM Sarah Chiang, Jeffery Xiong, Andy Shao, FM Darwin Yang, Jarod Pamatmat, and a number of others. In 2007, Sarah Chiang received the silver medal at the
World Youth Chess Championship held in Turkey. In 2008, Darwin Yang was the nation's top 11-year-old. In 2009, more than a dozen of the USCF's 58-member World Youth team were also members of the DCC. Also in 2008, the DCC hosted the Girls National Championships, in conjunction with the Kasparov Chess Foundation. Furthermore, the DCC hosts the annual state scholastic tournament for elementary, high-school, and college students.
References
{{reflist
External links
List of Club MembersDallas Chess ClubUTD Chess ProgramDenton Chess ClubTarrant County Chess Club
Chess clubs in the United States
Sports in Dallas