ICA Executive Board

Stephen Plotnick (President) joined the chess community when his son started playing late 2015. He has assisted Quest Academy run by Yury Shulman where his son takes chess classes. Due to his passion he is now a TD having worked at the Chicago Open and the K-12 Greater Chicago Open at McCormick Place. He started his business life in the early 1980’s trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. After working for Merrill Lynch heading up their IT department for their business brokerage and valuation division in Chicago, Steve started is own consulting business in 1987. He has maintained a relationship with many large companies including a multi-billion dollar company in retail and wholesale environment for almost 30 years. This is the strength he hopes will be his best asset for serving the Illinois Chess Association.

Eric Ortega (Metro VP)

Amy Green (Downstate VP) has been active in the chess community for 16 years when her son joined the school chess team in Kindergarten. She has been active in the Bloomington/Normal Area Scholastic Chess Association for 13 years serving as President for the last 10 years. This has afforded her the opportunity to organize tournaments at both the local and state level. She partners with the local Parks and Recreation to ensure chess is offered as an activity to engage new players. In addition, she is active with both IESA and IHSA in their chess activities.

Emily Dawson (Treasurer) 

Joshua Flores (Secretary) Picture this: Chicago Stockyards: railroads, steel factories, slaughter houses, warehouses. The younger branches of several Mexican families migrating into this Euro-centric neighborhood. A boy born with the gifts of pattern recognition, ADHD, spatial understanding, math abilities and a smart mouth to a marriage of two of these families.  A crucible for young Josh Flores which burned and forged him into a strong-voice, determined, fighting, advocate for himself. 

Puzzles satisfied a hunger for challenges and truth for the six-year-old, but the books had strange diagrams which escaped him. Figures on a checkerboard. A visit to a drug store, digging into his pocket for a quarter, and leaving with a small red and black box with the word CHESS. Another nickel and the same color scheme checkerboard was acquired. Now the problems could be solved. The box had rules!

Or so he thought.

Directors At Large

William Blackman grew up on the Southside of Chicago with 9 siblings. He learned to play chess at the old age of 13 during an after-school club held by the school. William continued to grow his love for chess at Morgan Park High School, where his math and physics teacher introduced him to chess tournaments and the study of the royal game/sport. 

Over the next three decades, William would include his love of chess in everything he does from being the topic of academic studies in his MBA program, teaching philosophy, small chess, math and tutoring service, decision making, and many other parts of his life. 

William firmly believes that chess saves lives and is worthy both recreational and academic time for students and adults alike. He is eager to serve the chess playing communities of Illinois.

Larry Cohen learned to play from father (Davis) and brother (Howard). First rated tournament in 1974 at Governors State University, which was mostly composed of Park Forest Chess Club (PFCC) players. Scored 1 point out of 5 games.

Directed first tournament even before being a tournament director. PFCC had about a half dozen players that were also Tournament Directors (TD), but none were available for the first round of the once-a-week tournament that was being held. I was asked to do the first round, and was told it was easy to do. I ended up directing the entire event, and that is how I was suckered into becoming a TD.

Eventually I started being a TD for events outside of the PFCC which included the US Amateur Team Midwest (now known as USAT-North), US Senior, US Amateur North, and the US All-Grade (K-12) held in Oak Brook Illinois. That led me into being a TD for scholastic events as well as adult events. That led me to being a TD for the Chicago Public Schools scholastic events as well as the Kasparov All-Girls national championships, both of which are organized and run by Renaissance Knights Chess Foundation. I have organized a number of national and non-national chess events in the Chicago area and in other states. That included in the 90s an Illinois Chess Tour event in Hammond, Indiana.

Danial Wilson