Colin Stapczynski

Colin learned how to play chess when he was six and started playing in USCF-rated tournaments in middle school. His first major tournament win was at the 1997 Pan-American Intercollegiate Chess Championships, where he took first place in the K-12 section.

The next year, Stapczynski finished in sixth place in the JV section of the 1998 High School National Championships. In 1999, he took second place in the All America Cup blitz tournament ahead of IM Danny Rensch while finishing in eighth place in the main event.

Colin started teaching chess in 2001 for the Chess Emporium in Phoenix, Arizona while attending Arizona State University. He played in the school's club and reached USCF expert rating in 2002.

In 2011, he won the U.S. Amateur West blitz tournament. Colin and his brother, Jeremy, started a Twitch channel called The Chess Couch in 2018. Below you will find Colin spouting out one of his favorite lines of the Catalan:

Stapczynski began writing tournament reports for the PRO Chess League during the 2017-2018 season. In 2018 he served as an assistant to PCL Commissioner, IM Gregory Shahade, before joining the Chess.com team shortly afterward—he was an SEO writer, Staff Writer, and Sr. Staff Writer before becoming Chess.com's Director of Written Content.

Colin earned his FIDE Arena Grandmaster title in 2022 and won a qualifier tournament for the 2022 Chess.com Global Championship in May 2022. In July 2022, Stapczynski finished with 5/9 in a 2022 CGC Play-in tournament, half a point behind GM Liem Quang Le and on the same score as GM Gadir Guseinov.