By Brian Ruth
The Scene staff
The Forest Park Chess Club is returning to campus this fall after a hiatus of several years.
The organizers are Music Program Coordinator Tom Zirkle and Copy Technician Tom Rogers.
They play pick-up games at 1:30 p.m. most Tuesdays in the cafeteria. On some days, more than a dozen students and staff members stop by to watch.
“They seem to be interested in playing,” said Rogers, 60. “And that’s the first step (to reviving the club).”
Zirkle, 46, envisions the club not only as an extra-curricular activity but also an educational experience. It might include studying famous chess games on DVD.
“One of the great misconceptions about chess is that the ability to play is a measure of a person’s aptitude,” Zirkle said. “It’s something that you gain experience with.”
Forest Park is less than a mile away from the World Chess Hall of Fame and The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis in the Central West End.
The Scholastic Center has hosted the U.S. Championship and U.S. Women’s Championship five times since opening in 2008, including last month’s grandmaster showdown.
“St. Louis has become a new chess mecca,” Rogers said.
The Missouri Chess Association and Missouri Chess Hall of Fame also are in St. Louis, which has a rich history of chess clubs. The most prominent was The Capablanca Club, founded in 1954 at Washington University.
Today, Webster University has one of the top collegiate chess programs in the country, and Lindenwood University offers up to 30 chess scholarships.
The Florissant Valley campus of St. Louis Community College has a chess club, which co-hosted a Community Chess Festival with the Scholastic Center in 2011. Maryville University recently started a club.
Mike Wilmering, communications specialist for the Scholastic Center, would like to host more college tournaments.
“It’s a fantastic way to stimulate competition locally, without incurring a large cost,” he said.
Rogers has been playing chess at Forest Park for decades. He was a student in 1974, when Washington University rented the cafeteria for a U. S. Chess Federation tournament.
The popularity of chess on campus has reflected national trends. Forest Park had an active club during the “Bobby Fisher era” of the 1970s.
Since that time, interest has come and gone.
“The club fell in and out over the years,” Rogers said. “The early to mid-‘70s s was the heyday of chess interest at Forest Park, just like the general interest across the country at the time.”
The fee for students to join the Scholastic Center is $50 a year.
“We offer programs and lectures on any given night that are free to club members,” Wilmering said. “Our membership demographic is as varied as the city itself.”
Students interested in the Forest Park Chess Club can contact Zirkle at tzirkle@stlcc.edu or go to the cafeteria at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesdays.
Zirkle and Rogers say the main focus is just getting students to play chess.
“We’re all there to learn,” Rogers said. “Come and watch if nothing else.”