Rocky Top Chess Inc.

Oct. 28th, 2023 - We hosted in-person Fall open at UT chess tournament co-sponsored by Chess Club at UTK. The results can be found here

August, 2023 - We continue in-person classes. For details, please contact our webmaster or email us at RockyTopChess@gmail.com. 

On Nov. 19th, 2022, we hosted one very successful in-person Fall Open tournament at Student Union, UTK. The results can be found here .

August, 2022 - We are back for in-person classes. For details, please contact our webmaster or email us at RockyTopChess@gmail.com. 

August 05, 2021 - Registration for Fall Semester Online classes has started. Please click here to register. (CLOSED)

Rocky Top Chess Club (https://www.chess.com/club/rocky-top-chess-club) as a member of Chess.com’s Clubs League had a successful year in 2020-2021 school year.  In 2021-2022, we plan to continue to host the online matches.  Details coming soon. 

A2. The league will have weekly matches on eight (8) consecutive Saturdays 

A3. The suggested default match time is Saturday 1:00pm EDT 

A4. Chess.com will post the club vs club pairings each Tuesday.

A5. Club admins must report weekly results by Sunday.

A6. The estimated match time is 1 hour.

USCF-rated online weekly tournaments on Chess.com

United and Prevail: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we will host a USCF-rated chess tournament on chess.com every Saturday at 9:30 am eastern time.  The tournaments are free to all current USCF players.  This is a 5-round Swiss, with a 10 min +3 sec time control.  Each tournament should finish in less than 2 hours. For each event, we provide $10 for first place, $5 for 2nd place, $5 each for Top U1200, Top U800 and Top U400. Players will be automatically paired on chess.com and the subsequent rounds will automatically start as soon as the prior round is completed.     

You can join the tournaments, following a few simple steps: 

1. All players need to join “Rocky Top Chess Club” on chess.com in order to play USCF rated online tournaments

a. Make sure you already have a chess.com account. It is free to sign up at

https://www.chess.com/register.

b. Please make sure your USCF membership is active. We will not accept any requests to play USCF rated online tournament on chess.com if the USCF membership is expired. 

c. Once you have signed up for an account, please join the Rocky Top Chess Club at

https://www.chess.com/clubs/members/rocky-top-chess-club. Click “Join” 

c. Go to this form (for new players only) and provide the required information (we need your name, USCF ID, chess.com ID, email address for pairing and communication purpose only).  We will only add players to the USCF rated online tournaments after they complete that form.

2. Players who already joined the “Rocky Top Chess Club” on chess.com need not do so again. On the tournament day, log onto chess.com.  Click on “Play”>”Live Chess”.  On the top right corner of your screen, you should choose “Tournaments”.  You will then see our Orange “Rocky Top Chess” Logo.  Please Log on and join the tournament online 10 minutes before the scheduled time.  This will make joining the tournament and starting the event run more smoothly.  New players not yet added to the group must follow the steps above.  

Please note that we need a minimum number of players (2x the number of rounds) to run each tournament.

Currently tournaments will have only one USCF-rated section. There will be no unrated online sections. 

Please contact rockytopchess@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Support Rocky Top Chess

Rocky Top Chess Inc. expresses its immense gratitude to everyone that made a donation in support of the organization.  As a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization, we would not be able to provide the chess programs and services to our community were it not for the generous contributions and support from you.  Please consider donating to help improve the club.  

Current Donors: 

Xiaopeng Zhao     Fangxing Li     James and John Nguyen   Jiangang Chen   Lei Xu

Qiang Zheng    Patrick Wu