Robert Alfred Karch was born on March 24, 1930. He was active in organized chess for over 60 years.
Robert played chess for the Lincoln High School team in Tacoma, Washington in the 1940s. He enlisted in the United States Army in the 1950s and retired in 1972 as an army major. In the late 1950s, Karch calculated the chess ratings for Northwest Chess and the Washington Chess Federation. In 1958, he was stationed in San Francisco and became the Vice-President of the San Francisco Bay Area Chess League. In 1959, Karch calculated the West Coast Chess Ratings while stationed in Germany. In 1971, he was an active chess player in Okinawa at the USO club in Naha, Okinawa. In 1972, Karch worked briefly for B.H. Wood in England as an editor for Chess magazine. He then returned to the Pacific Northwest and opened a full-time chess center, called the American Chess Service, in Seattle, which was active from 1972 to 1974. Active members of Karch's club included Grandmaster Peter Biyiasas, future Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan, and International Master Eric Tangborn. In 1973, he won the Seattle City championship. Karch served as editor of Northwest chess in the 1970s and 1980s and editor of Chess International, a chess magazine dedicated to correspondence chess. He served five years as the U.S. Secretary to the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF). For a short time, Karch was Secretary of the United States Chess Federation (USCF). In 1990, he helped organize the quarterfinals match between Anatoly Karpov and Johann Hjartarson in Seattle.
Karch died on March 23, 2010, one day before his 80th birthday.
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