ARNOLD DENKER, the “Dean of American Chess” and US chess champion from 1944 to 1946, enjoyed an outstanding career in the international organisation of chess, and latterly in schools chess. He was a bon vivant, a raconteur and one of the leading US players for decades.

A former boxer and boxing manager, he was known for his direct attacking style in chess; his vigorous assaults on the world’s top players were very striking when successful — the world title candidate Reuben Fine was one of his victims (see game).

Denker’s best years coincided with the war, which evidently hampered his career; he was also unfortunate in that his achievements were somewhat eclipsed by two of the great figures of international chess, Fine and Sammy Reshevsky, although he did beat both in US tournaments.

Arnold Sheldon Denker was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1914. At the age of 14 he joined the Manhattan Chess Club, regarded as the strongest club in the world outside Moscow. After a successful junior career, he graduated from New York University and won the first of six championships of the Manhattan Chess Club in 1940.

Denker’s contemporaries included one of the strongest assemblies of players the US has produced. They included Fine and Reshevsky, Isaac Kashdan, Al Horowitz, Arthur Dake and others, chessboard titans who had helped the US to regular victories in the chess olympiads of the 1930s.

Denker was, during his long career, showered with chess honours. He was awarded the official International Master title by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (Fide) at its inaugural ceremonies in 1950, and in 1981 he was made an honorary Grandmaster. He began participating in the US Chess Championships in 1936, moving up the ranks until his victory by a clear point in 1944. His score in that championship was a remarkable 15½/17 (91 per cent) with no losses — a score unsurpassed until Bobby Fischer’s clean slate of 11-0 in the 1963-64 championship.

In 1946 Denker successfully defended his title in a ten-game “East vs West” challenge against Herman Steiner, of Los Angeles, scoring 6-4. In tournament and exhibition play, he met and drew with five world champions, including Fischer.

His tournament results included =3rd at Hastings in 1945-46, the first top international congress after the war, and =10th at Groningen in 1946. The latter tournament was packed with the world’s leading players and it immediately established Denker as a major force in international chess.

His further exploits included a world record by playing 100 opponents in 7hr 33min, shaving a full hour from the record set by the Cuban world champion José Capablanca.

After the defeat of the elite of US chess by the Soviet Union in a radio match in 1945, Denker remained an active player but also became involved in chess organisation. He served for many years as president of the North American Zone of Fide. He was on the board of the American Chess Foundation, the US Chess Federation (USCF) and the US Chess Trust. In 2004 he became only the third person to be proclaimed “Dean of American Chess” by the USCF for his achievements in leadership, journalism and chess promotion. In 1999 he was one of only two Americans whose names were entered into Fide’s Gold Book at its 75th anniversary celebrations in Paris.

He wrote several books, of which The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other Stories (1995) is his most enduring: a colourful selection of anecdotes about the great figures of US chess. He was a mentor to Fischer and other promising young New York players, and during his presidency he saw the US re-establish itself as a world power in chess.

After “retiring” to Florida, Denker still found time for schools chess. He took special pride in inaugurating in 1984 and later sponsoring the Arnold Denker Tournament of High School Champions (held annually during the US Open). He was known affectionately as “The Denker” — Denker, of course, means “thinker” in German.

Denker married Nina Simmons in 1936. She died in 1993. He is survived by their daughter and two sons.