The second day of the 27th Annual Sacramento Chess Championship on July 5 illustrated the growth that’s occurred locally with the game.

Conference rooms A and B of the Holiday Inn Express on Auburn Boulevard were packed with 66 games, with eight more games held at a different hotel due to space constraints, according to Tournament Director and Sacramento Chess Club Officer John McCumiskey. Overall, 154 people signed up for the tournament, its largest turnout ever.

Due to a mix of factors, Sacramento’s chess scene seems to be quietly thriving, highlighted by the robust interest in the tournament among participants.

“I would like to see this event continue growing,” McCumiskey said. “We’re gonna have to find a new space next year.”

A tournament for a broad mix

Inside the conference rooms at the Holiday Inn Express, tables were set up where small groups of players sat side by side and across from their competitors in tight quarters. A tense and focused atmosphere hung over the rooms, with players and spectators alike encouraged to shut off their phones.

“They say when his feet don’t touch the floor, you’re in trouble.” Paul Taylor, Orangevale chess player

The tournament drew a diverse array of players in age, ethnicity and ablebodiedness, with one player in a motorized wheelchair reputedly among the best chess teachers in the United States. Aaron Thompson, who has an expert rating as a player of 2020 and lives in the Natomas area of Sacramento, appreciates this about chess. “I find what I really like about it are the players,” Thompson said. “Because you’re getting people from different circumstances. So some of the individuals of the chess club are homeless, they have different careers … which I find really beautiful.”

Thompson was at the event as a spectator, having taken a break from playing chess but wanting to see old friends. There seemed to be a camaraderie among players. One man whipped out a tablet as he sat outside the conference room reviewing moves — serious chess players can be meticulous about going over every move of a game — with a group that included Paul Taylor, an average-rated player who lives in Orangevale. “I think you’d have a hard time finding a bad person in that room,” Taylor said. “It’s good personalities that take to chess.”

Some groups of younger players hung together between rounds, spread around a foldout chess board in a lobby area outside the conference rooms. Near the front of the hotel, Arjun, a 9-year-old boy from Folsom, stood with a male guardian after his latest game. “I could have probably won, but I was kind of tired and I was hungry,” Arjun said. “My tummy was rumbling.”

In general, players know to watch out for the younger players, who can be child prodigies who rapidly increase their ratings. “They say when his feet don’t touch the floor, you’re in trouble,” Taylor said.

One of the people taking part in the tournament was Stewart Katz, a recently-retired attorney who has played chess since the 1960s. A couple of months before the tournament, Katz spoke with Comstock’s about his love of chess, saying that he’d never gone more than a year between tournaments without playing. “It’s a game that … you don’t feel guilty about playing seriously,” Katz said.

Katz, who is 70, also acknowledged chess’s popularity with youth. “It’s become a very, very young person’s game,” Katz said. “It’s not unusual for me to be the oldest or second or third-oldest at a tournament or section.”

The one exception for the tournament’s diversity was in female representation, with very few girls or women at the playing tables in the conference rooms. “We’re a little weak on women,” Taylor said.

This isn’t limited to Sacramento. The Guardian made note in 2021 of a past sexist remark by a chess official that men were wired to play the game better than women. Judit Polgár, a grandmaster and perhaps the greatest female chess player of all-time, disputed this. “It is not down to biology,” Polgár told the Guardian. “It’s just as possible for a woman to become the best as any guy. But there are so many difficulties and social boundaries for women generally in society. That is what blocks it.”

What’s driving the growth of chess in Sacramento

Different factors account for chess’s growth locally. One of them: The rise in online chess around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, with chess.com noting in early 2023 that its traffic had doubled in less than two months and that its servers were struggling. Some of this traffic has led to an increase in in-person tournament registrations, according to McCumiskey.

“There were a lot of players who played a lot of chess.com … during the pandemic and then, ‘Let’s (try) this for real,’” McCumiskey said.

The game also has a way of drawing people back into it, such as Michael Blake, an above-average-rated player who lives in Sacramento. Blake took a near six-year break from chess before attending a chess tournament in Reno this past April. “I just kind of got excited about it again,” Blake said. “So I started playing again.”

Sacramento has an ecosystem for the chess community. The Sacramento Chess Club notes on its website that it is an affiliate of the US Chess Federation (UCSF) and that it was named 2016 UCSF Chess Club of the Year. There are also training opportunities. On Tuesday evenings from 6-10 p.m. at Great Escape Games at 1250 Howe Avenue, Suite 3A, in Sacramento, 30 to 40 people can sometimes be found playing chess. The IHOP at 3001 N Street also has an event geared toward younger players on Fridays evenings, which helps compensate for a dearth of youth chess tournaments at the moment.

“Used to be we could get them into some of the high school and school tournaments where we’d help out the tournament director and stuff,” Taylor said. “But that all went since COVID.”

Still, it’s no knock on the local players in Sacramento’s chess community.

“We have players from masters down to complete beginners,” McCumiskey said. “So there’s a lot of strength that’s available. It’s just a matter of when they come out and play.”

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