Gisela Kahn Gresser

Gisela Kahn Gresser (February 8, 1906 – December 4, 2000) was an American chess player. She dominated women's chess in the United States, winning the U.S. Women's Chess Championship nine times from 1944 to 1969.

Chess career Gresser learned chess at a very late age. On a cruise from France to New York in the late 1930s, she borrowed a chess manual from a fellow passenger and taught herself how to play. By the end of the cruise, she was hooked. In 1938, she was a spectator at the first U.S. Women's Chess Championship tournament, organized by Caroline Marshall (wife of US Champion Frank Marshall) and held at the Rockefeller Center in New York City (won by Adele Rivero). She first played in the championship in 1940, and in 1944 she won it with a perfect score.

In addition to her repeated successes in the U.S. Women's Chess Championship, Gresser also played in the Women's World Chess Championship tournament of 1949–50, and subsequently in six Women's World Championship cycles: five Candidates' tournaments (1955, 1959, 1961, 1964, and 1967) and one Interzonal tournament (1971). She played for the U.S. team in three Women's Chess Olympiads (1957, 1963, and 1966). In April 1963, she became the first woman in the United States to gain a master title, with a rating of 2211.