The U.S. Chess Championship is an invitational tournament held to determine the national chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 champion of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Since 1936, it has been held under the auspices of the U.S. Chess Federation. Until 1999, the event consisted of a round-robin tournament

Round-robin tournament

A round-robin tournament is a competition "in which each contestant meets all other contestants in turn".-Terminology:...

 of varying size. From 1999 to 2006, the Championship was sponsored and organized by the Seattle Chess Foundation (later renamed America's Foundation for Chess) as a large Swiss system tournament

Swiss system tournament

A Swiss-system tournament is a commonly used type of tournament where players or teams need to be paired to face each other for several rounds of competition. This type of tournament was first used in a Zurich chess tournament in 1895, hence the name "Swiss system". The Swiss system is used when...

. AF4C withdrew its sponsorship in 2007. The 2007 and 2008 events were held (again under the Swiss system) in Stillwater, Oklahoma

Stillwater, Oklahoma

Stillwater is a city in north-central Oklahoma at the intersection of U.S. 177 and State Highway 51. It is the county seat of Payne County, Oklahoma, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 45,688. Stillwater is the principal city of the Stillwater Micropolitan Statistical...

. The 2009 event was held at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis in St Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

.

Champions by acclamation 1845-1889

Years	Champion	Notes
1845–1857	Charles Stanley Charles Stanley (chess player) Charles Henry Stanley was the first chess champion of the United States. When the first-ever U.S. championship match took place in 1845, Stanley defeated Eugéne Rousseau of New Orleans and thus claimed the title....	Defeated Eugène Rousseau Eugéne Rousseau (chess player) Eugène Rousseau was a French chess master. He was the strongest chess player in New Orleans in the first half of the 1840s. The Rousseau Gambit is named after him....  in a match in 1845
1857–1871	Paul Morphy Paul Morphy Paul Charles Morphy was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy...	Won the first American Chess Congress American Chess Congress The American Chess Congress was a series of chess tournaments held in the United States, a predecessor to the current U.S. Chess Championship. It had nine editions, the first played in 1857 and the last in 1923.-First American Chess Congress :...  in 1857
1871–1889	George Henry Mackenzie George Henry Mackenzie George Henry Mackenzie was a Scottish–American chess master....	Won the 2nd, 3rd and 5th American Chess Congress

Match Champions 1889-1935

S. Lipschütz is regarded as the first US Champion of this period, as a result of being the top-scoring American at the sixth American Chess Congress, New York 1889.
The following US Champions until 1909 were decided by matches.

	Year	Winner	Loser	Result	Notes
1	1890			unknown	The match may have not taken place or may not have been completed.
2	1890			+7 -3 =0
3	1892			+7 -1 =7
4	1891-2			+7 -4 =3	The final game was delayed until January 1892 because Judd was ill.
5	1894			+7 -6 =4	Prior to the last game the players agreed to extend the match. Many sources classify this as the first of two matches instead of one extended match.
6	1894			+5 -3 =1	Can be considered a match extension or a new match.
7	1895			+7 -4 =3
8	1896			+7 -4 =4
9	1896			+7 -2 =4
10	1897			+10 -7 =3
11	1898			+7 -2 =2
12	1909			+7 -2 =3	Title reverted to Showalter after Pillsbury's death in 1906.
13	1923			+5 -4 =9	Marshall declined to play in the invitational tournament that began in 1936.

Tournament champions 1936-

#	Year	Winner	Notes
1	1936
2	1938
3	1940
-	1941		Match victory over I.A. Horowitz
4	1942		An erroneous ruling by the director allowed Reshevsky to tie for first with Isaac Kashdan Isaac Kashdan Isaac Kashdan was an American chess grandmaster and chess writer. Kashdan was one of the world's best players in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was twice U.S. Open champion... . Reshevsky won a playoff match against Kashdan 6 months later.
5	1944
-	1946		Match victory over Herman Steiner Herman Steiner Herman Steiner was a United States chess player, organizer, and columnist.He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 1948 and became International Master in 1950....
6	1946
7	1948
8	1951
-	1952		Match victory over Herman Steiner Herman Steiner Herman Steiner was a United States chess player, organizer, and columnist.He won the U.S. Chess Championship in 1948 and became International Master in 1950....
9	1954
-	1957		Match victory over Arthur Bisguier Arthur Bisguier Arthur Bernard Bisguier is an American chess Grandmaster, chess promoter, and writer. Bisguier won two U.S. Junior Championships , three U.S. Open Chess Championship titles , and the 1954 United States Chess Championship title. He played for the United States in five chess Olympiads...
10	1957/8		At 14, the youngest champion ever
11	1958/9
12	1959/0
13	1960/1
14	1961/2
15	1962/3
16	1963/4		Fischer went 11-0 in the tournament, the only perfect score in its history
17	1965/6
18	1966/7		A record eighth win (out of eight attempts)
19	1968
20	1969
21	1972		After playoff 9 months later against Samuel Reshevsky Samuel Reshevsky Samuel "Sammy" Herman Reshevsky was a famous chess prodigy and later a leading American chess Grandmaster...  and Lubomir Kavalek
22	1973
23	1974
24	1975
25	1977
26	1978
27	1980
28	1981
29	1983
30	1984
31	1985
32	1986
33	1987
34	1988
35	1989
36	1990		Knockout tournament
37	1991		Knockout tournament
38	1992
39	1993
40	1994		The only person to have held both the US and Soviet championships
41	1995
42	1996
43	1997
44	1998
45	1999
46	2000
47	2002
48	2003
49	2005		Tournament was played in 2004, but called the 2005 Championship, for legal reasons
50	2006
51	2007
52	2008
53	2009
54	2010		Kamsky won an Armageddon tie-break playoff against Yury Shulman Yury Shulman Yuri Shulman is a Belarusian American chess grandmaster. He also goes by the alternate spelling of "Yury Shulman."-Chess career:Shulman started formal chess lessons with coach Tamara Golovey when he was six years old. He went on to study under International Master Albert Kapengut at age 12, and...
55	2011

See also

• U.S. Women's Chess Championship
  U.S. Women's Chess Championship
  The U.S. Women's Chess Championship tournament is to determine the woman chess champion of the United States.-List of U.S. Women's Chess Champions:*1937 Adele Rivero*1938 Mona May Karff*1940 Adele Rivero*1941 Mona May Karff*1942 Mona May Karff...
  
  
• U.S. Open Chess Championship
  U.S. Open Chess Championship
  The U.S. Open Championship is an open national chess championship that has been held in the United States annually since 1900.-History:Through 1938, the tournaments were organized by the Western Chess Association and its successor, the American Chess Federation .The United States Chess Federation ...
  
  
• U.S. Women's Open Chess Championship
  U.S. Women's Open Chess Championship
  The U.S. Women's Open Championship is an open chess tournament that has been held held irregularly. From 1934 through at least 1966 it was held in conjunction with the annual U.S. Open Chess Championship...
  
  
• American Chess Congress
  American Chess Congress
  The American Chess Congress was a series of chess tournaments held in the United States, a predecessor to the current U.S. Chess Championship. It had nine editions, the first played in 1857 and the last in 1923.-First American Chess Congress :...
  
  

External links

• 1998 Interplay US Championship official USCF site
• 2009 U.S. Championship official site