Florin Felecan (born April 7, 1981, in Brasov) is a

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

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 ...

. Born in

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, he resides in

Skokie, Illinois Skokie (; formerly Niles Center) is a Village (United States), village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. According to the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 67,824. Skokie lies approximately north of Chicago's dow ...

, having moved there on July 17, 1997, along with his family.

Chess career

Felecan is a multiple-time former junior national champion of Romania. In 1994, he tied for first in the U14 European Championships with a 7/9 points performance. He won the 1998 National Denker Tournament of High School Champions in Hawaii with 5/5 record. He served as one of four advisors on the World team in the

Kasparov versus The World Kasparov versus the World was a game of chess played in 1999 over the Internet. It was a , in which a World Team of thousands decided each move for the black pieces by plurality vote, while Garry Kasparov conducted the white pieces by himself. Mo ...

chess match in 1999. Felecan attended University of Maryland - Baltimore County (UMBC) on a chess scholarship from 1998 until 1999. He played first/second board and led UMBC to the Pan-American team Championship in Dallas (1998) and Toronto (1999), but left shortly thereafter. He intermittently played chess from 2000 through 2002, then stopped playing until May 2006. Felecan began actively seeking his International Master title after being contacted by organizer Sevan Muradian. Felecan achieved the three required title norms between April 2009 and July 2009. He became the third person to earn all three required title norms at the North American FIDE Invitational series organized by Sevan Muradian, behind IM Mehmed Pasalic (the first person to achieve this) and GM Marc Arnold (the second person to achieve this for his IM title). IM Felecan worked in a non-chess related occupation until 2011 when he actively became a full-time chess coach for youth and adult players. On the March 2013 FIDE list his

Elo rating The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor. The Elo system wa ...

was 2375. In 2016, he tied for first in the Chicago Open Under-2400 section beating Grandmasters Eugene Perelshteyn and Holden Hernandez in the process. His 6/9 result was the best result for any player in the state of Illinois.

External links

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Romanian Chess Federation

FIDE Title Applications
{{DEFAULTSORT:Felecan, Florin 1980 births American chess players Chess International Masters Living people Romanian emigrants to the United States Romanian chess players Sportspeople from Brașov