DTFC Vera Menchik Memorial Tournament

3 Days, 6 Players round robin, that's 10 simultaneous games. The tournament will run for 5 rounds, and the final between the best six players.

Celebrating the Queens of Chess! Women have been game-changers in chess since the 16th century, from Vera Menchik to Hou Yifan. Who are your favorite female players?

The first strong female chess champion was Vera Menchik. Vera Menchik died on 26 June 1944 during a German V-1 flying bomb attack on London during World War II.

Menchik was the first and only woman to play on a par with the masters before World War II. She was born on 16 February 1906 in Moscow and had a Czech father and an English mother. In 1921, after the Russian Revolution, she went to England with her mother and her sister Olga, who also played chess well. Menchik had learned chess from her father when she was nine years old and after joining the Hastings Chess Club in 1923 she soon achieved considerable success.

In 1927, Vera Menchik won the first official Women's World Chess Championship, which was played in parallel to the Chess Olympiad. With ten wins and one draw, she dominated the tournament from beginning to end and became clear first. In the following years, until 1939 and the outbreak of World War II, Menchik defended her title in six World Championship tournaments. In these six tournaments, she won 78 games, drew four, and suffered only one loss. In 1937 Menchik also played a World Championship match against Sonja Graf from Germany, which Menchik won (+9 =5 −2).

Before World War II chess was predominantly male-only and as the only woman in this male world, Menchik was looked down upon somewhat derisively by the masters of the time. Albert Becker even suggested that anyone who lost to Menchik should automatically be admitted to a "Vera Menchik Club" – of which he soon became one of the first members.

Euwe was one of the most notable members of what became known as the “Vera Menchik Club

However, Menchik had no chance against Capablanca: Menchik lost all seven games she played against the Cuban. But she defeated several other top players.

Menchik's career could have continued for a long time, but she died at the age of 38 during World War II. On 26 June 1944, she was killed together with her sister and her mother by a German bomb attack on London.