Route 20 Chess Club Celebrates One Year of Rated Chess

Traveling west past McHenry, DeKalb or Kendall County, an Illinoisian finds himself in a part of the state that's hard for him to categorize, being neither "Chicagoland" nor "downstate." It's not an area he has much reason to think about . . . unless he lives there. In this ill-defined area is the little-known micropolis of Freeport, a city not on anyone's list of favored destinations.

Unless you play chess.

Filling a void created by the dormancy of the Rockford Chess Club, the Route 20 Chess Club   (USCF affiliate here), named in honor of the U.S. highway that links northwest Illinois to the outside world, was founded in 2009.

On July 9, it celebrated its first anniversary of holding USCF-rated events with an open Swiss tournament and a rated beginners' open, the same combination with which it made its debut the year before.

The turnout at this event shows how the club has grown. Route 20's first event, an unrated Swiss with a $5 entry fee, drew 16 players, mostly from Freeport and Rockford; the club's first rated event, five months later, drew 19. This past weekend, 27 players from Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa congregated at Highland Community College's Community Services Center to compete for trophies and cash prizes. But even that paled next to the 42 young players who descended on the Freeport Public Library over Memorial Day weekend for the third in a series of free youth tournaments, with K–3 sections rated under the USCF's Junior Tournament Participant program. The organizers were delighted to finally be attracting local players of high school age, but even more surprised to have three entrants who'd come all the way from Naperville to play!

The challenge the club still faces is how to draw more strong players to its open events. Northwest Illinois and neighboring Wisconsin and Iowa are an area with many ambitious beginners but not many experts and masters; consequently, Route 20's RBOs and introductory opens are always robustly attended, while much room for growth remains on the upper end. This weekend, the format of the Route 20 Open Swiss was changed from 4/SS, G/45 to 3/SS, G/65 after top players at the club's last rated event, the Pecatonic Octads, indicated that they preferred the longer time control. Nevertheless, it remained a modest field, albeit one that allowed a couple of young Class B players from our backyard, Caleb Larsen and Ben Spinello, to shine. Caleb won all three of his games; Ben won two before losing to Caleb and shared second place with Dane Bell and Route 20's Will Engel.

The growth of the Route 20 Chess Club coincided with the formation of Freeport's first-ever middle school chess team, the Pretzel Kings, whose players announced their presence with authority in the long-running Rockford Chess Challenge tournament series, the IESA's first state chess tournament in Bloomington, and the North Boone Team Tournament. In Saturday's RBO, Zach Kauffman -- a rising star on the Pretzel Kings who's been held back in recent tournaments by a low USCF rating that kept attracting the blessings of the Bye Fairy -- finally had the opportunity to rise to the top of his section without being penalized on tiebreaks. He won the first-place trophy with four wins and a draw; past RBO participant and trophy winner Leo Ma of Madison, Wis., placed second with the same score. An older player, Route 20 member Ken Conter, came in third.

Chicagoland is a gravity well: its attractive power reaches far into the hinterlands, yet that same force inhibits movement in the other direction. For a long time, the McHenry Area Chess Club served both Chicagoland and northwest Illinois by holding monthly rated tournaments right on top of the event horizon. With that tournament series on hiatus, residents of the outer burbs who are looking for a chess fix are invited to consider a trip west.