Ruth Haring, a top American chess player in the 1970s and ’80s who played for the national women’s team in five consecutive Chess Olympiads and became a rare female president of the United States Chess Federation, died on Thursday in Chico, Calif. She was 63.

The cause was not immediately known, her son, Theodore Biyiasas, said. She had gone to the hospital a day earlier with symptoms of pneumonia, he said.

Ms. Haring, the standout in a family of chess players, was chosen for the women’s national team for the 1974 Chess Olympiad, a biennial tournament in which teams from all over the world compete. (The team did not win a medal that year.) The leading four or five women in the country were usually selected for the competition.

That same year, Ms. Haring played in the United States Women’s Championship, finishing second to Mona May Karff; it was the best result of Ms. Haring’s career.