ABOUT US
MEMBERSHIP
The club has members from all over the world, including Eire, France, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, China and Nepal, while our club captain has represented Papua New Guinea at the FIDE Chess Olympiads many times. We have half a dozen women members, including a WFM. Strengths range across a thousand Elo rating points. Our strongest player is an FM rated 2292, while our newest improver is currently rated just over 1200. We have more than 50 members, which helps to keep membership fees to a modest £30 a year. |
As we play on licensed premises, juniors are usually referred to the Leeds Junior Chess Club. Young people are welcome at the venue, but as a safeguarding measure must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Zhixing Bai, whose parents are visiting from China, made his league debut recently. At eight years old, he's already rated over 1600!
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THENLeeds Chess Club has a long and illustrious history. The club's current constitution was written in 1834, but there is evidence chess players were meeting together in Leeds as early as 1820. We may well be the oldest continually active chess club in England, although Edinburgh CC (founded 1822) has a better claim the be the oldest in the UK as a whole. If you have any knowledge or records, please let us know. Our earliest club records have sadly been lost, but a book in the Manchester Reference Library has on its flyleaf the faded but clearly legible inscription, “Leeds Chess Club, Novem. 1820, No. 5.” We assume it previously resided in Leeds Chess Club’s library. Our earliest recorded tie is a correspondence match with Liverpool in 1824/25: 1824-1825 Liverpool-Leeds, Correspondence Game (The railways didn't arrive in West Yorkshire until the 1840s so an over-the-board match would have involved a gruelling weeklong round trip by coach and horses.) Both clubs have agreed to a replay in 2024 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the original event. See our PRESS RELEASE for more. We were founder members of the Yorkshire Chess Association and have played in the Woodhouse Cup (Yorkshire's premier league) since its inception in 1885. In the good old days, we played at venues like the Grand Café on Boar Lane and the Gambit Café on Park Lane where we laid on lavish dinners for visiting teams. We commissioned magnificent silver trophies from the likes of Fattorini in Harrogate. Unfortunately, annual subscriptions cost about the same as keeping a horse or a servant for a year. Today we're a much more modest and unassuming outfit. Chess is now accessible to all. Visit the HISTORY page to explore Leeds Chess Club's fascinating and colourful story. |
NOWTwo hundred years later and we're still going strong. We traditionally meet in the Leeds town centre. It can be tricky parking at the weekend, but with modern city centre living, we feel Leeds still needs a city centre club.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON CHESS We have two teams in the Yorkshire League (played on Saturday afternoons). Leeds A compete in the Woodhouse Cup (Division 1). You'll need to be rated over 1800 Elo to get in the team. We have three FMs and a WFM and still only finished fourth last season. It's a tough league. Only the national 4NCL is stronger. The B team plays in the Silver Rook (Division 3) where players rated under 1800 will still find strong competition. WEDNESDAY EVENING CHESS Wednesday evening is our club night, where two things go on. There is a very competitive Leeds Evening League, which is played in a quiet upstairs room, but many members prefer to simply play social chess in the bar. The Evening League is good place to blood beginners as well as being very competitive in the top divisions. We are current champions having won the first division three times on the trot. The club's top scorer on Wednesday wins the Jeffery Memorial Trophy: Our glory years are somewhat in the past, but we're still here and we're still batting away at the top level of regional chess. Why not come down and meet us? If you're new to the game there's no better place to learn and improve, and if you're already a strong player you'll get the right level of competition. |