FUN, GAMESMANSHIP KING OF THIS CASTLE
Fitchburg group celebrating 60 years of fun, board meetings
PiTHSEURR » The Wachusett Chess Club is celebrating 60 years of playing chess.
The present day club was officially formed in February of 1960 at the Lt. Laurence S. Ayer Veterans of Foreign Wars
post headquarters on Pleasant Street in Fitchburg, although it was around in some capacity before that.
Rocco Pasquale, a 1939 Fitchburg High School graduate and Fitchburg post office employee, was the key founder of the chess club.
‘Avid player’
“He was an avid player and thought that Fitchburg deserved to have a chess club, where others who played the game could meet and compete with each other,” said Wachusett Chess Club Program Director George Mirijanian.
At the time it was formed, club membership was small and the players inexperienced, and as membership grew, the players improved. The club remained at the VFW site until 1963 when it moved to the First Parish Unitarian Church hall and then several other locations around the city over the decades before finding a home at Fitchburg State College in the mid-1990s.
Mirijanian, a lifelong city resident, started playing chess in the late 1950s when he was a student at Fitchburg High School. He has been a member of the chess club for over 60 years, before the club acquired its name.
“What I enjoy most about playing chess is the people I encounter in my over-the-board games,” Mirijanian said. “I find them very interesting, with interests I share with them. I look at them as not opponents but as partners in the creation of beautiful games.”
Mirijanian won his first Wachusett Chess Club championship in 1977 when he was 33 years old. The last time he won was in 2015, when he was 71. He has a total of 17 club championship wins and is a former multi-time president of the Massachusetts Chess Association, the New England Chess Association and regional vice president for New England in the U.S. Chess Federation.
“What I like most about being a member of the Wachusett Chess Club is seeing players improve and getting satisfaction from getting better,” he said.
Mirijanian is also a national chess tournament director and directed the 618-player U.S. Open in Boston in August of 1988, held at the Lafayette Hotel in downtown Boston.
“One other highlight in my chess career was having world chess champion Tigran Petrosian come to the club in February 1982 and give a simultaneous exhibition, where he played all comers at the same time,” Mirijanian said. “The Sentinel & Enterprise did spectacular coverage of that event, sending a photographer and a reporter.”
Mirijanian worked for the Sentinel & Enterprise for nine years as the newspaper’s chief obituary writer. Even before he was hired for that role, he was writing a weekly chess column for the paper that ran from 1969 to 2002. The column continued for a few months after he left the paper in October of 2002, ending early the following year after being written by a couple of chess club members.
World Chess Championship
The newspaper sent Mirijanian to New York City in October of 1995 to cover the World Chess Championship on the top floor of the World Trade Center.
“I enjoyed my 33 years writing a chess column for the Sentinel & Enterprise,” Mirijanian said. “The newspaper had exclusive coverage of that world championship, complete with games and photos. That was a high mark in my work at the Sentinel & Enterprise.”
Mirijanian has hosted Chess Chat on Fitchburg Access Television since it launched in October of 2006, a 30-minute chess show which is done live each month and then broadcast several times a week on FATV’s public channel. His “superb” cohost, Dave Couture of Westminster, is a chess author, photographer, and active player.
“We chat about recent tournaments and present, with analysis, one of the games from that tournament,” Mirijanian said.
One of their favorite guests is International Master Carissa Yip of Chelmsford, who at just 10 years old won the Wachusett Chess Club championship in 2014 with a perfect score — seven straight wins.
‘National recognition’
“She gained national recognition by being the youngest female ever to defeat a grandmaster,” Mirijanian said of Yip.
“Last year she was the highest-rated female chess player in the country. She has garnered more publicity for the Wachusett Chess Club than any other player we’ve had. Just Google ‘Carissa Yip chess’ or ‘Carissa Yip Wachusett Chess Club’ and you will see a lot of information about Carissa, our shining star.”
Yip started playing at the chess club when she was 7.
She was made an honorary member of the Wachusett Chess Club for life after winning the 2014 club championship, becoming the youngest female ever to become a master and youngest female ever to beat a grandmaster, and awarded the Woman Grandmaster and International Master title by the World Chess Federation.
This past October, Yip won the U.S. Girls Championship and was a runnerup in the U.S. Women’s Championship held the same month.
Both tournaments were held online by the St. Louis Chess Club, the premier chess club in the United States.
The Wachusett Chess Club has had brushes with other famed chess players as well, hosting world renowned chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer on March 2, 1964, and numerous grandmasters including Petrosian have done exhibition matches there.
The Wachusett Chess Club suspended in person play in early March.
Prior to the pandemic, dozens of members had been meeting every Wednesday evening in Room C159 of the McKay Complex at Fitchburg State University. The club currently holds weekly virtual tournaments rated by Chess.com and run by Mike Commisso of Brookline, N.H., a key member of the Wachusett Chess Club and the certified tournament director of the U.S. Chess Federation.
Mirijanian said his “top goal” for the club right now is to resume play at Fitchburg State University.
Top goal
“Once that is done, holding nationally rated tournaments rated by the U.S. Chess Federation, the official governing body for chess in the country, would be my priority,” he said.
Once they are able to get back to playing at Fitchburg State University, Mirijanian said becoming a club member is easy.
“All one has to do is show up on a Wednesday, any time after 6 p.m., go to Room C159 in the McKay Complex and register as a member,” he said.
“The annual dues are $20, but I think I am going to reduce that once we resume play.”
All ages and skill levels are welcome.