Where do you play whiskeytown? Actually, "evening chess clubs" could be an interesting thread.

As a little kid in Canada I played at the Kitchener-Waterloo Chess Club. It was a bunch of decent chess addicts (the top players were about 2100 Canadian rating IIRC) dutifully pushing plastic on weeknights. I was the only kid at the club and people were extremely nice to me. This helped make some of my earliest memories in chess positive ones.

In middle school (in Australia!) I played occasionally at the Melbourne Chess Club, which might be the oldest and most famous club in the South Pacific. I suppose it's Australia's Marshall.

In high school (US!) I played at the Nashville Chess Center; a friend and I jokingly called it "the imperial palace" because it was a huge house. Now in college (UMiami FTW) I play at Blas Lugo's MICA, (Miami Int'l Chess Academy) one of the strongest chess clubs in the country. The vibe is very different to the clubs where people meet on weeknights; here we play g/30 tournaments on Sundays.

there's a thing called Chess Castle in Minneapolis - (minutes away from my house) that has Monday Night quads - they are 30 minute rounds, which I believe hits both blitz and regular time controls and so we get rated in both - it rents space in the basement of a bridge club

they have two-three other events a week as well but if I'm not working, I'm sleeping - usually one of the two when they occur - would like to play a real tourney or two while I'm still under 1500 and unknown - after that they'll all chessbase me and crush my butt

Roundtower, what do you think of moving my post and whiskeytown's reply into a separate thread called "Chess Clubs"?

done imo

Germany, which is infamous for its "Vereinskultur" (club culture), is slowly losing lots of clubs that used to be frequented some years ago. Also, league play is dying out at the lower ranks. Seems like most people now see chess as a "sport" for individuals, open tournaments are still thriving. I feel that's kinda sad, team matches have a special dynamic. Two of my favorite chess games were in league play, one where i converted a bishop endgame after 80 moves for the 4:4 and my first game as a replacment in the Oberliga where i won to secure a 4,5:3,5 win for our side.

In eastern europe people are still chess-crazy. A friend of mine grew up in Yugoslavia, he said in his 80000 people city there were at least 3 clubs that were open every evening of the week.

I would have like to have been in NYC during the 70's when all the big clubs were growing and full of GM's -

I have never been to the one in St. Louis where the championship was held but that looks seriously pimp -

I remember the programmer of Rybka said in an interview in this month's Chess Life he stayed in Budapest for a few yrs so his wife (gf?) could play in the First Open, which I guess is a Sat. tourney of the month where you can get GM Norms -

I really don't know much about the national/international chess environment - I have travelled for poker but not chess - perhaps I should try to snag a tourney somewhere down the line

RB

Whiskeytown,

I recommend the Canadian Open. I played as a kid and it's a huge, fun tournament with lots of strong players.

A couple years back I played in the "pro" section of the Guelph (Canada) Pro-Am. My section was restricted to FIDE 2100+, and my rating scraped 2105 or something. It was very interesting to play a serious closed tournament with time to prepare for opponents, etc but I was not prepared for the level of play and basically got my **** pushed in.