Chess Team

Chess is surging in popularity! The undisputed worldwide regent of board games for fourteen centuries, chess is a favorite of athletes for the strategy, mathematicians for the probabilities, and people of all ages as a limitlessly fun and challenging intellectual sport. Whether participants choose to sharpen their skills or build their rank, chess is a fantastic individual and team sport.

Chess team trains all year. The Team meets twice a week to discuss game strategy and skill development. Players regularly challenge each other both in-person and online. Playing with a variety of players with different game styles and skills leads to rapid improvement for all participants.

RS hosts the following free tournaments open to regional students:

November 2, 2024 K-8 Tournament – Registration Now Open!
March 15, 2025 9th-12th Tournament – Registration Now Open!

“Chess is much easier than people make it out to be. Once you know the moves and some basic strategies you can play and have fun!” Hestia H ’25

COACH JOAQUIN LITZENBERGER

Coach Joaquin Litzenberger learned how to play chess when he was 8 years old from family members at home. At age 9, he began competing in Buenos Aires’s scholastic chess cycle on board 1 for his school, ‘Colegio Argentino Arabe’, where he played alongside Argentina’s top youth chess talent and once met former Chess World Champion Anatoly Karpov. Coach Litzenberger is an accomplished ‘Class B’ tournament player, with a current U.S. Chess Federation rating of 1705 (August 2023).

In 2022 he won the under U1600 section of the Coastal Virginia Open in Norfolk, Va in outright first place with a perfect score of 5/5. More recently, he drew 3 games and won 2 games for a 3.5/5 score in the U1800 section of North Carolina’s largest open chess tournament in history in Charlotte, the NC Classic. So far in 2023, he has played in regional tournaments in the Washington D.C. and Charlotte, NC area and crossed the 1700 elo mark. Coach Litzenberger favors a strategic style of play and his specialty is the final phase of the game -the endgame-, which he considers the ultimate basis of chess understanding. Karpov continues to be one of his favorite players. He looks forward to competing in Virginia’s Championship Section Tournament this fall and organizing chess tournaments in Renaissance School.