Category: General

At the beginning of each spring semester, we reopen club registration for a week to allow new students to enroll in the club.

Registration is now open until next Friday, January 13th.

Please see the instructions on our Registration page on the website:

Club Registration

Postage stamps are becoming an endangered species as people mail letters less and less.  But in the past, stamps were used as an important tool for communications across the world.  The popularity of Chess intersects with stamp collecting with many countries around the world issuing stamps depicting Chess related items like grand master images, chess pieces, etc.  Below are a few interesting Chess stamps.

How many countries do you count?  Do you know where these countries are located on a globe?   How many countries no longer exist or have changed names?  What is your favorite Chess stamp?

At today’s club meeting, we handed out newly designed Chess bucks to each student.  Our old Chess bucks were getting a bit beat up and we were running out of the lower denominations, so instead of just printing new versions of the same design, we decided to redesign them.

Chris Jones did the redesign work and based it on Monopoly money.  We have 6 different denominations, $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 and $10.   Each has a front and backside.  On one side is a photo of a famous Chess grandmaster and on the other side is another grandmaster.  Most of them were rivals against each other, like Bobby Fischer vs. Boris Spassky or Garry Kasparov vs. Anatoli Karpov.  We also added chess pieces to represent the value of the chess buck, so the $1 chess buck has a single pawn.  The $5 chess buck has a rook, etc.  (The kids will know the values of each chess piece)

We plan to release special limited edition Chess bucks in the future with new and different portraits as well as special bucks for tournaments, etc.

Click the photo of the new Chess bucks to see all the new designs. If you have ideas for future Chess bucks, please let us know.

Draden and I watched a great Chess movie this weekend called Queen of Katwe, a PG rated Disney movie.  We highly recommend it and think it will do well at the Oscars this year.  It has beautiful cinematography, a great script and a glimpse into the wider world around us all.

Queen of Katwe is a 2016 American biographical sports drama film directed by Mira Nair and written by William Wheeler. Starring David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong’o and Madina Nalwanga, the film depicts the life of Phiona Mutesi, a Ugandan chess prodigy from Katwe who becomes a Woman Candidate Master after her performances at World Chess Olympiads.

Living in the slum of Katwe in Kampala, Uganda, is a constant struggle for 10-year-old Phiona (Madina Nalwanga) and her family. Her world changes one day when she meets Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), a missionary who teaches children how to play chess. Phiona becomes fascinated with the game and soon becomes a top player under Katende’s guidance. Her success in local competitions and tournaments opens the door to a bright future and a golden chance to escape from a life of poverty.

Please remember that Club registration closed on September 19th.  We have 124 students enrolled this year.

If you would like to join our Chess club, we will open registration again during the first two weeks in January.

Please do not send your kids to Chess club if they are not registered club members.  We have limited parent volunteer resources and cannot supervise non-Chess club kids.  It is also a safety issue since we do not have any parent contact information for students that are not registered members of the club.

Do you know how many books have been published about the game of Chess?  Since Chess is such an old game, some estimate that over 100,000 books have been written about it.  Even today, over 300 new Chess books are published each year.  No one has the time to read all the available Chess books, so we have to rely on reviews from expert Chess players to tell us which books are the most effective and useful.

Want to see the covers of over 900 Chess books?  Here you go:

We come to the conclusion of another fantastic school year and have put together a review of the Chess Club’s accomplishments this year.  Please look through the file below that outlines all the great things our kids and volunteers have done over the past school year.

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