The American Chess Association (ACA) was a

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

organization founded in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in 1857. The organization organized the first major chess tournament, the First

American Chess Congress The American Chess Congress was a series of chess tournaments held in the United States, a predecessor to the current U.S. Chess Championship. It had nine editions, the first played in October 1857 and the last in August 1923. First American Ches ...

, in the United States on October 6, 1857. On November 11, 1857,

Paul Morphy Paul Charles Morphy (June 22, 1837 – July 10, 1884) was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and is often considered the unofficial World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he was c ...

, who had defeated

Louis Paulsen Louis Paulsen (15 January 1833 in Gut Nassengrund near Blomberg, Principality of Lippe – 18 August 1891) was a German chess player. In the 1860s and 1870s, he was among the top players in the world. He was a younger brother of Wilfried Pa ...

in the tournament, was presented with a silver service at the prize giving by Colonel Charles D. Mead, President of the ACA. On behalf of Paul Morphy, the American Chess Association offered a $5,000 challenge to any player in Europe to contest a match with the recently crowned ACA champion. The ACA published a monthly magazine, '' American Chess Monthly'', founded in January 1857 by

Willard Fiske Daniel Willard Fiske (November 11, 1831 – September 17, 1904) was an American librarian and scholar, born on November 11, 1831, at Ellisburg, New York. Biography Fiske studied at Cazenovia Seminary and started his collegiate studies at Hamilt ...

, who had helped organize the First American Chess Congress. Fiske edited ''American Chess Monthly'' from 1857 until 1860, four months before it ceased publication. Morphy was credited as co-editor, though he had little actual involvement. Another magazine called Chess Monthly published in 1879-96 had no connection with this one. The organization ceased to function within a few years, and should not be confused with others of the same name founded in 1871 and 1874 (which organized the Third American Chess Congress), or the later American Chess Federation (a successor to the Western Chess Association), which merged with the National Chess Federation in 1939 to form the current

United States Chess Federation The United States Chess Federation (also known as US Chess or USCF) is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in FIDE, the World Chess Federation. US Chess administers the official national rating ...

References

Further reading