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Nix has played the game off and on since his grandfather taught him moves at 4 years old. He truly fixated on the game when the 1978 World Chess Championship between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi hit the news.

"When I knew that there was such a thing as a world championship and that grown adults played the game seriously, and it was a newsworthy item, that really caught my imagination," Nix said.

The Greenville Chess Club has been around longer than Nix has been a member, and its origins are elusive to him. He started attending during college in the mid-1980s.

When he retired from the military, he stayed with the club and today serves as its president and the treasurer of the South Carolina Chess Association.

The club meets weekly at Boardwalk, a games store near the Haywood Mall. Each meeting usually attracts 20 mostly adults but the occasional middle- or high-schooler. Ten of the players are regulars and the rest drift in and out.

"It's just remarkable to me how many people I'm always announcing, 'This new person is playing their first-ever tournament,'" he said.

Players start showing up around 6 p.m. and pay an entrance fee of $5. At 7 p.m., players shake hands, start their clocks and play three rounds of 30-minute, quick-rated chess until the shop closes at 9 p.m.

The group has talked in the past about introducing instructional elements to the club meetings but, ultimately, the consensus is that the majority desire rated games.

"I'll give the people what they want," he said.

Similar to Greer, Vincent Iorga learned chess as a child living in Romania alongside his father. He still remembers on Saturday when his father beat him at the game well over a dozen times.

When Iorga finally won a round, his skills grew quickly, and he was playing any chance he got.

When he moved to the U.S. nearly 11 years ago, he struggled to find a competitor in Anderson County, eventually teaching a friend how to play at a more advanced level so he could have a mate.

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