The Charlotte 
Chess Club
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Charlotte Chess Club History
The Charlotte Chess Club (originally the Metrolina Chess Club) was founded in 1975 by NM Leland Fuerstman. The club initially met at Central Piedmont Community College and soon moved to the Athens Restaurant near the school. In 1980, the club met at the Divan on Central Ave, a short lived pub and game parlor. Through the years, because of available tables, chairs, lighting, heat and/or air and food, various restaurants have served as the venue for our meetings including the Old Smokehouse Dining Room, two Shoney's locations, Wendy's and even a McDonald's! The club currently meets at the Skyland Family Restaurant, 4544 South Blvd. (Woodlawn Rd. at S. Blvd toward town on L) on Wednesday evenings from 6:30pm til 5am! (Open 24 hours!)
Though others have filled in as club Director through the years, the job always seems to end up back in Fuerstman's lap. The Charlotte Chess Club remains proud to have promoted simultaneous exhibitions featuring Grandmasters such as Joel Benjamin, Leonid Shamkovich, Sammy Reshevsky, Lev Alburt, Yasser Seirawan, Gregory Kaidanov, and in 1980, World Champion Contender Viktor Korchnoi. And, in 1982 Fuerstman was actually negotiating to bring World Champion Bobby Fischer to Charlotte for a 50 board simultaneous exhibition. (The event was to be sponsored by the "Charlotte Observer" and Fischer was to have received $100,000). Fischer was upset that a newspaper in Pasadena, California had written a negative article about him years earlier and both were owned by Knight-Ritter Publishing?! and ultimately backed out.
Over the past 35 years the Charlotte Chess Club has conducted literally hundreds of tournaments including many North Carolina State Championships, the North Carolina Invitational Championship, the North Carolina Team Championship (which many have expressed an interest in seeing revived) and the Southern Class Championships. 
Currently, the Charlotte Chess Club promotes an occasional Saturday 3 rounder. 
(See Upcoming events for the next event scheduled). 
Through the years, the Charlotte Chess Club with it's friendly atmosphere, gamut of players from every walk of life, and reputation for fierce weekly tournament competition (one rated game per Wednesday evening) has produced several Masters to include, IM Miles Ardaman (2500), NM Dr. Luigi Vacca (2300), NM John Kirby (2300), NM John Lane, NM Rich Jackson, NM Robbie Cunningham (2300), NM Leland Fuerstman, NM Garrick Wells, NM Mike Klein (2300), NM Matthew Hoekstra (2400), NM Frankie Newton (2300), NM Justin Daniel, NM Harold Mouzon III, SM Karthik Rangarajan (2500), IM Daniel Tapia (2300), NM Chris Mabe (2300) and NM Joshua Mu.
The Charlotte Chess Club continues to flourish as one of the most active chess clubs in the Southeast.