Skip to content

What we’re about

This group is for people are interested in local casual (unrated) chess games, rated games, online games with people you actually have met, and chess lessons by FIDE Master Luke. All ages and abilities are welcome. (The younger you start chess, the better! Chess develops logical thinking capabilities and is beneficial outside of chess.)

All of our events are free or done on a cost-recovery basis. So, while a normal USCF tournament might cost $200, we offer one for $10. The USCF fee is $45/year, but, excluding that, you can become rated for $1-$10, <5% of the traditional cost! (FIDE ELO ratings are more impressive, but they are inherently much more expensive to obtain than USCF due to their exclusive certification program. It's unclear if they are more useful.)

We have a non-exclusive and supportive outlook, so we try to alert members of other local chess events that they might be interested in attending, like Bishops and Beers (not hosted by us). If you know of a worthwhile chess event not currently listed in the calendar please contact me (Jason Arthur Taylor) and let me know what's missing.

Some of the places we communicate are as follows:

https://chat.whatsapp.com/Eru4qI8q7cf6OoQreTl8zy
https://www.chess.com/club/rockville-chess-meetup
https://www.chess.com/club/rockville-chess-club
https://lichess.org/team/rockville-chess-meetup

Access to these resources is not guaranteed.

Their theory behind the the last three links is that we could all be playing another team online, where we vote on next moves of slow games or something. However, our idea is to have members who know one another be able to find actual people to play online that they know or can know. So, if you want to see who is up for an online game you can go to lichess or chess.com and see who in our club is online.

We invented Baby Blind Chess, a handicapping system that allows good players to play bad players while growing your visualization memory brain cells (allowing you to think deeper into potential lines), but at present, to use it you do need a Lichess account. So do please click on the last url.

Upcoming events (4+)

See all