WHSCA Links

Scholastic Links

Northwest Scholastic Chess League: News from the northernmost league. Randy Kaech has a terrific site and does a lot of work for chess.
Kingco Chess League: Covers all happenings east of Seattle to the mountains, and north to south from Bothell to Renton.
Seattle Metro League: With the departure of Edwin Dizon the Seattle Metro League is now being maintained by Lakeside. Includes player rosters and standings. Sadly, it no longer has Edwin's bowling league news.
New Southwest Washington Scholastic Chess: Sponsor of this site is John Wise.
Wesco League Website: Thanks to Allan Shell there's now a Wesco High School League Website.
Dr. Loren Schmidt's Eastern WA Chess Site: Dr. Schmidt's site with additional information on chess in the eastern part of the state.
Chess in the Northwest: A cool page featuring, among other things, a history file of past champions in Oregon and Washington

Regional Links

Open Window School: Open Window School presents an annual five-week, Summer Exploration Camp for 4–10 year olds, including a five-week chess program. Class size is limited to ensure a great camp experience for the children and is open to the public.
Georgi Orlov's Summer Chess Camps: Georgi Orlov's summer chess camps have become a mainstay of summer chess activity. Here's a chance to improve your game and have a fun summer activity all rolled in one.
Northwest Chess: News from the Northwest chess scene. The most relevant part of this site to the scholastic player is located under "calendar" on the top left part of the page. This section has tournament announcements for most important tournaments in Washington and Oregon. Northwest Chess Magazine is the publication of the Washington Chess Federation & The Oregon Chess Federation. Thanks to WCF officer Duane Polich, who is acting as webmaster.
Eastern Washington Chess Organization: David Merrill and David Sommers are helping to coordinate elementary chess events in Eastern Washington, particularly in the Tri-Cities area. Check out their website for more information.
British Columbia Junior Chess: Junior chess players (from Kindergarten to Grade 12), junior events and tournament results in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. They also provide a Searchable Chess Rating Database for NWSRS chess players. Note this database moved to a new web server in October 2009, so if your old bookmark doesn't work then try my link here!
K-12 Chess Association of British Columbia: Excellent site run by the K-12 Chess Association of BC. These are the people who organize the BC side of the Intermat Tournament. Check out what's going on north of the border, and maybe pay a visit up there for some great scholastic chess.
Chess Odyssey Camps (Oregon): Pete Prochaska's great site from our neighbors to the south. Those of you in the southern part of our state, in particular, will want to find out what's happening in the Oregon Chess Scene.

National Links

United States Chess Federation: The official US Chess Site. A big site with top 50 scholastic lists, news, and many many features. Also has a fully-stocked chess store.

Commercial Sites

Chesshouse.com: Raphael Neff's superb site. Secure server for safe credit-card payment. Do you like the books and equipment that the Neff family sell at our tourneys? They have a good website with the same goodies! Save them a drive an buy some of their stuff!
Chessmate: Owner David Weinstock is a craftsman too. This chess vendor sells typical stuff also but his specialty is high-quality sets and rare books.

Multi-Use Sites

These next few sites are both newsy and commercial in nature. All are superb in some ways: Note that Inside Chess and Chessplayer are locally generated, too.

Chessplayer.com: Some superb teaching articles are found on Georgi Orlov's website. Georgi spins excellent writing, current chess events, strong opinions, and a good archive. Has an good variety of items for sale too. Sometimes loads a tad slowly. Along with his wife Elena, a former Women's world Championship runner-up, runs a popular chess camp in the summer.
This Week In Chess: The very latest news from the chess world-want to find out round-by round coverage of a tournament? This is the page. I bit hard to find your way at first but indispensible. Has commercial links too, but this site is out of England, so shipping time may be an issue.
The Chess Cafe: Excellent writing on chess. Has articles that entertain, inform, and amuse. May be a problem for older browsers. Seattleite Mike Franett is one of my favorite columnists. Bruce Pandolfini has an excellent Q & A column for beginners. Has numerous GM contributors. Even has a arbiter's section for Ollie, Kirk, Paul & Jay! (one example from there: what do you do when a player stinks at the board? Check out their archive for the answer to that!)
ChessArea.com: This multi-purpose site has a lot of good information for the chess player. It focuses on lessons and training, but also has tournament information and an excellent link section.

Playing Sites

The Internet Chess Club: My personal favorite playing site. A pay site ($24.50 per year for students) with 24 hour games in a friendly environment. Play chess, siamese (bughouse), giveaway, and other fun chess variants too. Consistent and reliable ratings. Parents: this site has filters for rude behavior.
Chess.net: Yasser has an excellent playing site too.
World Chess Live: Site is a family-friendly online chess service. Free six-month memberships to World Chess Live are available to all members of the U.S. Chess Federation, whether or not they are currently members of WCL.
The Microsoft Gaming Zone: Another playing site. Site has poor implementation of rules. For example, no draws automatically awarded if game reaches K vs. K and will give the player a loss if their flag falls in such a position. I'm not sure the chess supports Macintosh computers. Has other games besides chess.
The Free Internet Chess Server: Another free chess server but without strong filters for rude behavior. Is reputed to have strong bughouse play.

Miscellaneous

Chesslab.com: An online database of 2 million games can let you know where you first strayed off the path of the greats. Or, you can look through games of the Grandmasters. A nifty resource. Requires at least Netscape 4. IE probably ok too if current enough. Thanks to Nat Koons for the tip.
University of Pittsburgh Chess Page: Why is this page special? The archives they keep! Check out the FTP site and you will see there is a treasure-trove of good stuff to download.
Colorado Chess Association links page: Why try and reinvent the wheel? Rick Nelson has made an updated and thorough list of excellent chess links-check it out!