Club Corner - The New Quincy Chess Club

Dan Racine, President, Quincy
Chess Club

It's always nice to be able to welcome a new chess club to the ranks. I had the chance to visit the newly organized Quincy Chess Club last Wednesday evening.

The Roche Brother's Grocery Store Community Room in Quincy was like most of the community rooms I'd been in in greater Boston, if somewhat larger and a bit better decorated with scholastic portraits taken in local colleges. But that wasn't the thing that what I first noticed when walking into the room last Wednesday evening.  The first thing I noticed was Dan Racine, the new Quincy Chess Club's founder, greeting people at the door, answering questions and watching everything connected with this new project.

The Quincy Chess Club existed sometime in the past, but, like many clubs, it seemed to succumb both to cultural changes and perhaps a bit of the letdown chess suffered when Fisher vanished. None of that mattered to Racine. Moving to Quincy he saw the need for a chess club, and he just did it. "We're creating our own history," he told me Wednesday night.

Chess Lesson at the Quincy Chess Club

As we talked Wednesday night, Dan constantly multi-tasked. He made pairings for the Quincy Chess Club's first Quad tournament (unrated at this time), took down results, played one of the youngest club members, Josh, in a game, and then arranged for a lesson on how to do game recording for him from another club member. With the club currently having one big room it has to be admitted that games were not held in the you-can-hear-a-pin-drop environment that seems to have become the norm in tournament environments today, but Racine successfully made an effort to keep things at a reasonable level.

Josh, at QCC, considers his game

Racine has gathered a good bit of community support for the club. The Roche Brothers are giving the club the Community Room free once a week. Many club members are business owners in the community that can be drawn upon for support and perhaps other playing sites as the club expands. I was impressed with both the solidity that the club has established now, as well as the solid plans for expansion and publicity that are in the works.

It has always been my opinion that chess clubs are the backbone of organized chess in this country. Dan Racine and the developing new Quincy Chess Club are making a major play to help anchor chess on the South Shore. The Quincy Chess Club meets Wednesday nights starting at 6:30PM in the Community Room of the Roche Brothers Grocery Store Community Center, 101 Falls Blvd. More details can be found on their website at www.quincychessclub.com. They're worth a look.