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Alice Deal, Longfellow, and DCI Take Top Placings in Potomac Youth Chess League

The Potomac Youth Chess League, the competition we run for all interested middle schools in the greater Washington DC area, finished its latest season of competition last month.  Initially run from 1997 to 2010 as an in-person competition, the PYCL was brought back in 2023 with the games being played online on the lichess.org platform on Saturday afternoons.  We continue to add new participants with 18 schools registering to play this year.

This year saw an extremely close contest for the championship.  After the last of the six rounds finished, three schools – Alice Deal and DCI of Washington, D.C. and Longfellow Middle School of McLean, VA – all finished with five match points.  The order of the podium places came down to the board points tiebreaker, with Deal’s team (pictured in the first image from the top) earning the title by a razor-thin half-point margin over Longfellow.  DCI’s team, pictured second from top, was close behind in third.

All three schools were awarded commemorative plaques in honor of their impressive seasons.  We congratulate the winners and extend our thanks to the faculty members, parents, and other adults who helped coordinate their school teams for the matches each Saturday of play.  

The 2026-2027 season of the PYCL is currently slated to start in late autumn of the next school year.  If your middle school has a chess team that is interested in participating, you can email us at ms-league@chessctr.org for more information.

Area-Wide Scholastic Is a Huge Success

We were pleased to sponsor the D.C. Area-Wide Scholastic Tournament, held on Saturday, April 25, at the Washington Convention Center downtown. It was nice that the Big Chair Chess Club and the D.C. Chess Association contributed to the effort.

Nearly 200 students representing more than 100 schools registered for the event. Not only were DC, Maryland, and Virginia represented, nine students from Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, made the trek to compete. Berkeley Springs High School won the trophy for the top high school. Georgetown Day School in the District of Columbia was the top middle school, and Churchill Road Elementary in McLean, Virginia, took top elementary school honors.

The playing venue was terrific. Players were close enough to others that a sense of community was created, yet there was adequate elbow room for players to be comfortable. The skittles room, similarly, was large enough to accommodate the hundreds of players, family members, and teachers between rounds while not being so cavernous as to allow isolation.

The event was divided into eight sections by grade. The youngest section, for students in kindergarten through second grade, was the largest. There were 34 children vigorously competing, with an Oyster (DC) second grader and a kindergartner from Spring Hill (VA) tying for first place. In the third grade, two Churchill Road friends won all four games. In the fourth grade, another Churchill Road student took clear first place. The fifth grade section ended with another tie, with a student from Prince George’s County’s New Hope Academy tying with a student from Fairfax County’s Kent Gardens Elementary School, each winning all four games.

A D.C. resident attending St. Albans School took clear first in the sixth grade section, a Falls Church student from Henderson Middle School won the seventh grade section, a D.C. International Middle School student won the eighth grade section, and a Montgomery Blair freshman won the high school section.

 

A student visiting Washington from Estonia entered the tournament and extended the event’s cultural and geographic diversity. The diversity was the point of the tournament. Chess appeals to people from every background. The Chess Center brings together people from many locations and cultures to play. We have been proud to lead a chess trip to another country, and to arrange for internet matches with players from many other countries on four continents.

We expect this to become an annual event.

Chess Renaissance in DC

The U.S. Chess Center left its last location in Washington, DC, where we could run regular chess events in 2016. Since then, we and other groups have run occasional events in the city, but people in the city have had to travel to the suburbs for most significant competitions.

Recently, however, the Big Chair Chess Club (“Think b4U move”) and Live Chess have begun filling in the gaps. The Big Chair Club offers classes for kids in addition to occasional tournaments at such sites as Anacostia’s Busboys and Poets.

Big Chair Chess Club President Wendall Brown and Vice President Wendell Hankins with a student.

Malcolm Wooten, who managed the chess club at Howard University when he was an undergraduate there, has created Live Chess and is now running regular events at Potter’s House Bookstore and Café in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.

These events have attracted dozens of players, both casual and serious, and continue on a regular basis.

The two groups collaborate on successful events. They are coming along more frequently now, and it is a wonderful trend that will benefit the local scene. We look forward to continuing to feature their events in our Play Calendar.

Metro Area Chess League Playoffs 2023-2024: Chantilly Sweeps to Victory

Chantilly High School dominated the Metro Area Chess League playoffs yesterday. Run as a three-round Swiss System tournament in the beautiful offices of the Institute for Educational Leadership in Washington, DC, the playoffs featured the top eight schools from the regular season.

The final standings in tiebreak order were:
1. Chantilly
2. Langley
3. Jackson-Reed
4. Oakton
5. Montgomery Blair
6. Richard Montgomery
7. Magruder
8. McLean
 
In an event like this, using tiebreaks makes even less sense than in a regular tournament, so it is better to think that Langley, Jackson-Reed, and Oakton tied for second place, with Blair, Richard Montgomery, and Magruder tying for fifth.

Chantilly won all three of its matches without relying on the tiebreak system designed to eliminate drawn matches. Demonstrating how evenly matched the teams were, five of the twelve matches ended with 2-2 scores, with tiebreak employed to determine the winners.
Twenty-seven schools entered the league this year. Plaques acknowledging regular season performance go to Langley as the top Virginia school, Richard Montgomery as the top Maryland school, and Jackson-Reed as the top District of Columbia school. In addition, BASIS DC won the competition for the top DC Public Charter School, with E.L. Haynes finishing as the runner-up in that category.
 
The regular season competition was a hybrid of online with in-person matches. The large majority of matches were played online, but a few were played in person. Scheduling the matches was a challenge for the coaches and captains, and during the playoffs the coaches had a meeting to discuss methods to improve that process. Those suggestions, which are designed to improve the communication process among the competing schools, will be implemented for the 2024-2025 season.
 
Registration for next year’s season will begin in September, with the first matches taking place in November. The 2024-25 regular season is scheduled to end in March 2025.  Learn more at: https://chessctr.org/macl/

Potomac Youth Chess League Concludes Its 2024 Season

The revived Potomac Youth Chess League has wrapped up its first season back in action.  A previous iteration of the league ran from 1997 to 2010.  The format and structure were similar to the PCSAA Chess League that we ran for charter schools the past three years; this year, that competition was merged and enlarged to be open to all middle schools in the greater Washington area.

Matches consisted of four-player teams from each participating school, and were played online during Saturday afternoons on lichess.org.  Eight schools took part this year, and matches began on January 6 and concluded on March 23.  Congratulations to league first-timers Capital Village PCS, whose team came out on top of a close race to take the title ahead of DCI.  

Final standings below:

SchoolMatch PointsBoard Points (tiebreaker)
Capital Village533.5
DCI4.532.5
Washington Latin331
BASIS DC324.5
Two Rivers2.517
Ingenuity Prep219.5
Meridian110
Capital City PCS00

We hope to continue to grow the league next year.  If you are interested in having your middle school participate, please send an email to admin@chessctr.org.

Photos from the Tournament at Burroughs Elementary

This week, the second and third grade students at Burroughs Educational Campus in Northeast DC had what has become an annual Pawn Game tournament.

The students played well, had a wonderful time, and demonstrated the spirit that will serve them well when they start to play full chess in 2023. We hope to have both classes playing chess at a level that we can take some of the students to the National Elementary School Championships in Baltimore in May.

Five students (three from second grade and two from third grade) won all of their games. Most important, they used excellent sportsmanship and worked hard throughout the hour we had the tournament.

A Productive First Year for Chess at Thomas Elementary

This school year we added a new program at Neval Thomas Elementary School in Ward 7 in Washington, D.C.  Thanks in part to the support of the D.C. Housing Finance Agency, we are able to provide this program at no cost to the school or students.

 
By teaching chess as an elective subject during the school day, we are able to reach those students who are unlikely to sign up for extracurricular activities.  Over 30 fourth-graders are participating in the program thus far this year.  Our goal is not simply to teach the rules, of chess, but to sharpen the students’ problem-solving skills that they can then apply to their other subjects.

One of our instructors, Robert Teachey, helps students develop their understanding of the basic strategy through the Pawn Game.  

 
In the U.S. Chess Center’s three decades of operation, we’ve successfully provided chess equipment and instruction to thousands of students in Title 1 schools thanks to the help of our contributors.  If you’re looking for a cause to support this year, consider making a charitable donation to our mission.  

The U.S. Chess Center is Proud to Teach Students at Washington Highlands

Our fall program at Washington Highlands is off to a bright start. This past Monday, taking advantage of the nice weather, Coach Alex and his students played the Pawn Game on the lawn in front of the Southern Hills community room.

Understanding pawns is key to understanding the greater strategy of chess

We have set a goal of preparing our students to play in nationally rated tournaments so that when the national championships arrive in the Washington area in less than 15 months our students will be ready to compete and win. 

Coach Alex and the kids break for a selfie

Since 1992, the U.S. Chess Center has taught many thousands of DC elementary schoolchildren the rules, strategy, etiquette, and discipline of tournament chess.  Through hard work and persistence, the students learn the importance of planning ahead, avoiding distractions, and delaying gratification in pursuit of long-term goals.  Please feel free to reach out to us if you are interested in having us create a program at your school.