“The Rising Storm” The Hurricane Chess Club Returns

By: Charles M. Unruh

On Thursday the 24 of August, Brian Britt and I traveled down to the intramurals field at the University of Tulsa for the Student Activities Fair. With a board and a sign up sheet we set up shop right next to Tri-Beta (biological honors society) and the Asian Student Association. After five minutes we began to play a game since no one was coming, and as people began to arrive some of them took interest in our game. The first person was Jonathan Francis, a 1675 rated freshman who was the first person to sign up for our email list (other than Brian and myself) at the activities fair. After standing up for about two hours and thirty minutes we had forty people on our contact list with six rated players besides John Cope and David Zelnick.

Then on Tuesday the 29th we had our first meeting at the Allen Chapman Activity Center with many people in attendance. The meeting was almost cancelled due to a former employee of the University of Tulsa targeting his former boss. Good thing his gun didn’t work. Also, we had sophomore, Scott McLean show up who is a strong player from here and participated in Oklahoma scholastic chess. Another surprise was Hai Hoang a gentleman and strong chess player from Vietnam.

The real deal here is that ladies and gentlemen we are back, and we are open to the public. We meet on Tuesday at 7:00 at the Allen Chapman Activity Center (ACAC) at the University of Tulsa with a come when you can policy. (As students we keep very busy).