Eric Schiller was born in New York City in 1955. In 1974, Schiller was the Illinois Junior Champion. Schiller played for the University of Chicago (where he earned a Ph.D. in linguistics) team several times at the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, winning it in 1986. Eric was the Hawaii action and blitz champion for 1988/89. He was an organizer of the Hawaii International chess festivals 1994-98 including 1998 US Open. He was California Champion 1995. Later that year, he with the music group Phish at the start of their "Chess Tour" where they played an ongoing game of chess moves on each tour stop

Schiller was an arbiter at several notable games and championships including the Chess Olympiad, and World Chess Championship. He is a USCF Life Master and FIDE Master. As of April 2009, Schiller has a FIDE rating of 2166. He is also an International Arbiter and International Organizer. Schiller's expertise and publications in the Flohr-Zaitsev Variation made him a sought-after expert when Gary Kasparov used that opening at the second game at the World Chess Championship 1990, where he served as Chief Press Officer, a post he held in 1986 and 1993 as well. He was Associated Press correspondent for the 1984 match, also appearing on PBS coverage.

Schiller has organized some majo chess tournaments. He has often been a news reporter, reporting on Chess Olympiads and World Chess Championship matches. Schiller was the arbiter for the Staunton Memorial tournament in London in 2005, 2007 and 2008, and the 2006 Gibtelecom International Chess Festival in Gibraltar, where he returned to play in the 2012 event.

Schiller has written over 150 chess books, more than any other author of the genre in the 20th century except Fred Reinfeld and Raymond Keene. John L. Watson, who has co-authored three books with Schiller,[4] considers some of Schiller's output to be well suited to its amateur audience. Watson wrote of Complete Defense to King Pawn Openings and Complete Defense to Queen Pawn Openings that "these books are explicitly aimed at the developing student, not the advanced player, and I think they both do a particularly good job of gently guiding an inexperienced player through a new opening. ... While Schiller probably deserves some of the criticism he gets, a consequence of writing too many books too quickly, he should also get credit when he does a good job."International Master Jeremy Silman wrote of Watson and Schiller's The Big Book of Busts, "I am forced to swallow my bigoted view of Schiller's work (or does this just validate my opinion of Watson?) and admit that this is a great book".Schiller's "World Champion Openings", which catalogs some of the opening moves of the great chess champions, was noted by designer George Lois as a non-fiction classic.

He also had a role in several major chess software projects including Kasparov’s Gambit (Electronic Arts) and Chessmaster.

Due to poor health Dr. Schiller is no longer an International competitor but he still wites and teaches in schools and trains several of the nation’s top players.[edited from Wikipedia]

Dr. Schiller’s website is www.ericschiller.com and he is on Facebook and chess.com frequently.