May 3, 2024
The Free Chess Workshop by Chess for Unity
The 2024 National Elementary Championship and National Middle School Championship, the pinnacle of the year’s tournaments, were on the brink of beginning. The members of Chess for Unity hosted a special workshop to support young players who planned to compete in the two tournaments. The workshop received more than 80 registrations from the USA and Canada. FM Vincent Tsay, FM Arthur Xu, IM Liran Zhou, and FM Erick Zhao taught the workshop on April 19, 2024. Please read the detailed report here. We hope you can try to solve some of the puzzles they presented at the workshop!
April 28, 2024
The Thirty-fourth 3rd Saturday Free Online Tournament Results
In April, Chess for Unity continued to host the 3rd Saturday Free Online Tournament for young chess players on Chess.com. Sixty-five scholastic players took part in the tournament on April 20, 2024. Many of them are returning participants of the monthly tournament. The total number of the 3rd Saturday Chess Club members keeps growing, including 640 members by April. We are pleased to announce the following players winning the Top 3 places in each section.
Open: Samuel L.; Michael C.; Daniel, Y.
U1200: Waylen X.; Alex L.; Kyle H.
U600: LaDanethegreat; Thisanth P.; Gerald C.
March 27, 2024
The Thirty-third 3rd Saturday Free Online Tournament Results
On March 16th, 2024, Chess for Unity has hosted 100 3rd Saturday Free Online Chess Tournament events on chess.com! We are honored to have served more than 800 young players through organizing the tournaments since 2020. Our 3rd Saturday Chess Club on chess.com consists of more than 600 members! We are impressed by these young players’ commitment to chess. Sixty-six young chess enthusiasts attended the competition on March 16th. FM Arthur Xu live-streamed the tournament on Twitch. Congratulations to the prize winners and all the participants!
Open: Alex Z.; stockfish130915; Joshua M.
U1200: Vaibhav J.; Charles C.; Kyle H.
U600: Jacob B.; Max H.; Felix Z.
February 25, 2024
The 32nd 3rd Saturday Free Online Tournament Results
There were 65 young players across the country who attended the 32nd 3rd Saturday Free Online Tournament on February 17th, 2024. Many scholastic events were scheduled over the Presidents’ Day long weekend, but the participant players gave a priority to our chess tournament! We are proud of the passion and commitment they demonstrated. Some of the participants attended the tournament for the first time. Here is the list of the prize winners-Top Three Players in each section. Congratulations!
Open: Andy Y., Ryan H., Alex Z.
U1200: Vihaan K., Joseph H., Bowen Z.
U600: Megan F., Ryan L., Ethan L.
Supporting the Local Chess Community
February 11, 2024
In the fall of 2023, FM Arthur Xu organized bi-weekly meetings to engage young players in learning and practicing chess knowledge and skills in the local libraries. Most of the participant players are at the beginner level. FM Arthur Xu selected and taught tactics to develop the participant players’ fundamental understanding of chess. When the participants played match games, he offered hints and analyses to guide their thinking. Meanwhile, he played individual games with some advanced players and simul games with the rest. The learning activity has attracted nearly thirty young players to attend. In the spring of 2024, FM Arthur Xu is establishing a chess club at a local community center–Xilin Community Center. The center generously provides a large, spacious classroom, which allows Arthur to recruit more students into the learning activity. The new C4U-Xilin Chess Club will offer free weekly lessons to local K-8 students on Saturday.
January 30, 2024
The 31st 3rd Saturday Free Online Tournament Results
Nearly 50 young players attended the 31st 3rd Saturday Free Online Tournament on January 20, 2024. It was the first 3rd Saturday tournament after the winter break in 2024. The Co-President of Chess for Unity, IM Jason Wang, live-streamed the tournament on our Twitch channel. Starting this year, Chess for Unity will give a prize to the Top Three Players in each section–Open, U1200, and U600. We want to acknowledge those young players’ performances and efforts in the tournament. Congratulations to the prize winners!
Open: Michael C; Brandon Y; Jason, W
U1200: Harry T; Brandon Z; Brooks, Jiang
U600: Max, H; Richard, C; Kyle, X
January 28, 2024
Chess, Growth and Community: An Interview With FM Christopher Shen
Chess is a battle between two players on a board; however, many people do not know that chess is a bridge connecting people across regions, religions, identities, languages, cultures, and ages. Chess is a fantastic way to interact with people and make new friends. On January 3rd, 2024, FM Arthur Xu interviewed FM Christopher Shen about the impacts of chess on his career path. FM Christopher Shen is a sophomore studying statistics and government at Harvard University.
“I think it just develops your character in a great way, your mind, your patience, your critical thinking, all of that.” –FM Christopher Shen
December 18, 2023
1st Issue
We are thrilled to launch the first issue of Chess for Unity Monthly Newsletter! We will share games and puzzles and bring chess players’ perspectives, stories and thoughts to you.
IM Jason Wang shared his journey of becoming an IM. Read his reflections and analyses on his games.
FM Arthur Xu interviewed GM Jonathan Mestel who is also a mathematician. Learn more about chess and math!
December 17, 2023
Thirty Tournaments since 2020
Fifty to more than one hundred young players attended the 3rd Saturday Tournament each month. Since its debut, over 700 young chess players have played the 3rd Saturday Tournament.
We are delighted to publish the list of the Top Three Players in each monthly tournament in Fall 2023.
September 9, 2023
Mastering the Moves: Chess Players and their Career Stories
— An Interview Project by FM Arthur Xu
Chess has been booming since the pandemic. The ancient game and sport, with a history spanning over a thousand years, is witnessing a remarkable resurgence. On December 31, 2022, chess.com had seven million active members in a single day for the first time. By January 20, 2023, the number of active members on chess.com had surged to an impressive ten million. People enjoy the mental challenges the game of chess offers. Chess has been found to contribute to cognitive development, boost concentration, and enhance problem-solving skills. Drawing from my experience as a chess player competing in tournaments for more than ten years, I’ve begun to ponder how chess is related to a person’s career choice and the enduring influence of chess-derived benefits on their careers. The interviews with the established chess players may illuminate the questions and help young chess enthusiasts envision their future careers.
October 15, 2022
Summer Story Contest
In the past summer, Chess for Unity invited k-12 chess players to submit a memorable story that occurred during their chess journey.
Congratulations to the winners who have won a prize in the Summer Story Contest!
September 19, 2021
Chess Talk: Video Contest
Chess for Unity inspired young chess players to show and tell their passion for chess! We are glad that the event was well attended. Congratulations to the Winners! Their videos are available on the Chess for Unity YouTube Channel.
Archived news
Challenge Me One Hour Contest: July 1-15, 2020
What a relief! The first chess event created and organized by our Chess for Unity team ended successfully. After intensive discussions in less than two weeks, Chess for Unity launched its first event called “Challenge Me” from July 1st to 15th 2020, where all 8 of our Chess for Unity board members went up against 16 young chess players. The registration was free and players were allowed to choose which time control they wanted to play in. We were thrilled at holding the first event, as it seemed to be an innovative way to engage young, novice chess players as well as to serve the chess community. Our team wanted to pay back to the chess community by supporting and inspiring more young kids to play chess.
The tournament attracted almost 60 kids from the whole nation and we featured a live stream commentary and game review. We were all joyful to inspire these kids. Many of them were extremely excited about participating in this free event where they got to learn and play with titled players like us, many of the challengers being as young as 6 years old. One of the board members met a determined chess fan that wanted to play more, and after the game review, offered to play more games. Another young player enjoyed playing and looked up to one of our board members. He saw the board member as a role model and was happy to find things they had in common, and elated at their similarities.
As a team, we learned how to work together and coordinate things to make the event go smoothly. Meanwhile, we brought together young kids and shared with them our experience in this free event. We are looking forward to the next event! You can watch the recorded live stream commentary on the Challenge Me July event from our Chess for Unity YouTube Channel. (Written by NM Arthur Xu, 07/19/2020)
Team Up Match: July 18-19, 2020
On July 18-19th, Chess4Unity conducted its 2nd online event, “Team Up”. This event was a charity event, with all profits going to the United States Of America Chess Federation (US Chess).
On July 18th, Armin Juhasz (International Chess Master and FIDE Trainer), taught a lesson, called “How to prepare your opponent” to participants of this event. Some of the participants may have used the information from the lesson to help them in the main event. Armin is the 2nd youngest FIDE Trainer in the world, and he has also worked with many students who have obtained impressive results in prestigious tournaments.
The main event featured 2 teams – Team Tiger and Team Lion, and players on different teams with similar ratings played a 2-game match (G15+2) – one game with white, one game with black. There were 19 scholastic players on each team, with Chess4Unity board members Erick Zhao, and Michael Zheng, and myself leading Team Tiger, and with Liran Zhou, Evan Park, and Derek Jin leading Team Lion. There were also additional 4 boards of add-on games (which didn’t count towards the final score) for very young chess players. The youngest player was 5 years old!
Many strong players competed in this match, including NM Dimitar Mardov, NM Derek Clasby, NM Ryo Chen, and NM Bryan Xie. In addition to this, players from 15 states all around the country attended this event! After all the matches finished, the sum of the scores of both teams were calculated, and Team Tiger won 24 out of the 38 possible points, while Team Lion won the remaining 14 points. Although Team Tiger won by quite a large margin, there were still many very close games that were decided in the last seconds by hapless blunders. While the players were playing their games, FM Vincent Tsay and NM Arthur Xu gave a live stream commentary of the match. Please watch the recorded live commentary here.
We sincerely hope that this event was enjoyable for all players. We also hope that the players gained something from the game review that was hosted by the Chess4Unity team. I know that I really loved talking with my aspiring chess friends during the game review, and I’m sure that my comrades did too.
The Chess4Unity team looks forward to seeing you in the 3rd event! (Written by FM Jason Wang, 7/26/2020)