Promoting Chess

Chess Clubs
1

I’m looking for new innovative ways to promote chess in a community that is new to the game. Most of the people I come across know how to play but haven’t experienced a thrill in the game.

So far I have started a club that meets twice a week and host the occasional tournament

henricochessclub.com

2

Good luck with your efforts. Remember for the club meetings to have a designated greeter. This is someone who can explain things, answer any questions, and most importantly insure that the new visitor can get a game.

Check with you local cable company and local paper to see if they might offer a free listing of your club. Getting the word out is always one of the most important parts of running a chess club.

Best “Chess” Regards,
Larry S. Cohen

3

The good old fashioned simultaneous exhibition is one way to start some excitement at your new club. If the players are of average strength, they will probably marvel at the sight of a master sailing from board to board making exciting moves.

4

We have several clubs in Delaware. All but ours are small, mostly 5-10 players. We have 30-40 players attending our meetings. Our mailing list is over 100 members. Things we do:

We email about the club meeting every week, the day of the meeting or the day before.

We don’t do USCF matches. Just fun matches

We have a club ladder (see my post on creating a club ladder). 36 matches last week!

We meet on Friday evenings. I think this is a key factor as it turns out to be a good night for meetings.

We welcome all ages. We have 5-8 kids. They make noise but they have improved. The kids really love the ladder.

We asked community newspapers and similar publications to mention our club meeting.

We tend to get 2-4 new members each week. When a new person shows up, one of us immediately greet the person, find out what caliber player they are and get them playing. We don’t let them stand around and get ignored.

We even have business cards we pass out to our members with the club web site and meeting time on it! We ask them to give to others.

We have links on our state chess association and in USCF to our site. We even have two sites :slight_smile:. We will probably consolidate into one one day, but two gives more chance we will get found when one googles for chess in Delaware.

We try to get links to our pages on other sites.

Bob Flanagan
brandywinechess.com