Queen City gambit: How Charlotte became a chess powerhouse
Upcoming top-level chess tournaments in Charlotte highlight the city's status as a chess center
The following article appeared in the November 25, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
Charlotte has captured the U.S. chess scene, thanks to the Charlotte Chess Center; the educational hub will host the U.S. Masters chess tournament for the fourth time over Thanksgiving weekend
James Canty of Michigan, who is considered one of the top chess players in the world, will compete in the U.S. Masters tournament in Charlotte Nov. 27 through Dec. 1. (Photo courtesy of Charlotte Chess Center)
by Lindsey Banks
Over the past decade, Charlotte has made a name for itself on the national chess stage, even earning the “Chess City of the Year” award in 2018 from the national chess federation, U.S. Chess.
Charlotte took home another chess award in 2019 — “Chess Club of the Year” — given to the Charlotte Chess Center, an educational chess hub founded in 2014 that hosts camps, classes, tournaments, school programs and lectures for thousands of local chess players of all ages and skill levels.
And this week, Charlotte’s standing in the chess universe becomes even more solid, as the Queen City plays host for the fourth time to the U.S. Masters and N.C. Open tournaments at the Westin hotel in uptown.
Charlotte’s rise to chess prominence can be largely attributed to the Charlotte Chess Center and its founder and executive director, Peter Giannatos.
Charlotte Chess Center is organizing the tournaments from Wednesday through Sunday, so as many people gather around the dinner table for Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing, about 275 master chess players will face off across U.S. Masters chess boards. The N.C. Open will feature about 400 additional chess players of all skill levels.
A collective $41,000 in prize money will be awarded, and there’s a potential for players to score points to qualify them for the World Championship.
The tournament has attracted a high caliber of players to Charlotte, making it one of the strongest tournaments in the U.S. in a decade, Giannatos said. Among the grandmasters will be Fabiano Caruana, the No. 1 player in the U.S. and the No. 2 chess player in the world.
“Just even the chance of playing somebody at that caliber, but also just being in the same playing halls, it’s just a very cool experience for chess players,” Giannatos said.
Giannatos’ passion for growing the city’s chess scene through the Charlotte Chess Center has made it the gold standard for chess organizations across the country.
Journey to the crown: In 2001, when Giannatos was 10 years old, his family moved to Charlotte from Pennsylvania. His chess journey began at James Martin Middle School in north Charlotte, where his math teacher led a chess club. An outside chess instructor would visit the school every other week to help prepare students for tournaments.
“The rest is history,” said Giannatos, who earned the FIDE Master title in 2017, one of the top levels in chess.
He graduated from Vance High School (now named Julius L. Chambers High School) and joined the chess club there. In 2007, Giannatos and a few of his friends started the Queen City Chess Association, a local club that hosted weekly games at the Asian Herald Library.
When it came time to attend college, Giannatos chose to stay close to home at UNC Charlotte, where he attended the Belk College of Business.
“I stayed local because of my involvement in the chess community already,” Giannatos said.
Throughout college, he continued to run the Queen City Chess Association, work with youth chess programs and teach private lessons. But in 2014, before graduating college, the future of the association was uncertain.
“I just thought to myself, I’ll either have to make something of this or I’ll have to step away,” Giannatos said. “But I understood that if I stepped away from it, there wouldn’t be anyone to take up what we were doing.”
So he launched the Charlotte Chess Center, a member organization offering educational programming and tournaments for players of all ages and skill levels. He raised $30,000 in seed money to open a physical location, which was a key chess club component for Giannatos.
As a child, he noticed chess “lacked serious organization and professionalism,” he said. There were few dedicated chess facilities in the U.S. aside from some in major cities or nonprofits with donated buildings.
Most clubs and tournaments were run by volunteers, often in older libraries or modest venues, he said.
“It didn’t bother me that much. I just wanted to play,” he said. “But I could see, as I got older, why that would be a deterrent for parents who wanted to get their kids involved.”
The center’s facility has attracted more players, Giannatos said.
“Having an adequate venue and kind of uplifting the standards a little bit enabled us to actually gain quite a bit of traction,” he said.
Today, the center has two locations. The main campus is located in south Charlotte off I-485 and Pineville-Matthews Road and the second site, which opened in September 2023, is in north Charlotte off I-485 and Benfield Road. The center has grown to 45 employees, 15 of whom work full-time, and about 1,500 total members. They also partner with around 50 schools in the Charlotte area to lead youth chess clubs.
It’s never too late to learn chess: While the center focuses heavily on youth programming, it’s also broadening its outreach to adults. Following the pandemic and Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” series in 2020, which follows the fictional tale of a young woman’s rise to chess mastery, Giannatos noticed more adults became interested in playing chess.
Over the past year, the Charlotte Chess Center has increased its social chess events for adults, partnering with local breweries like the Trolley Barn and Olde Mecklenburg Brewery to host free chess games for adults. The meetups draw about 100 participants, said Philip Armstrong, the center’s marketing director.
“Every table is full, so we realize we’ve hit on something,” Armstrong said. “This is kind of popping up around the U.S. — social events.”
In 2022, after retiring from his corporate marketing job, Armstrong sought ways to give back to the community. Remembering his college chess days, he searched online and found the Charlotte Chess Center. He started as a school chess coach before becoming the center’s marketing director a year later.
The Charlotte Chess Center welcomes people of all ages and skill levels, striving to teach beyond the basics.
“That’s the beauty of chess. Yeah, you’re gonna make mistakes. You’re gonna make a lot of mistakes, and you’re going to lose often,” Armstrong said. “And yet, out of each one of those losses, you learn, and the next time, you’re a little smarter.”
Lindsey Banks is a staff reporter for The Ledger: lindsey@cltledger.com
♟️ For those interested in joining the Charlotte Chess Center, check out the center’s website to learn more about classes and membership. Armstrong also recommends following the center on social media to learn more about the social meet-ups.
♟️ If you’re interested in checking out the competition this weekend, the competition hall for the U.S. Masters and N.C. Open at the Westin is not open to spectators, but the Westin will have a separate viewing room featuring a live video feed and grandmaster commentary of the games. The tournament will also be broadcast live.
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Related Ledger article:
“Chess is capturing new attention” (Feb. 8, 2021)
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