Our Chess School
I started Grandmaster School of Chess in the mid 1990s. Since then it introduced chess to thousands of children in the Greater Dublin area. At the beginning of 2020, our chess instructors were running weekly after-school chess classes in 26 schools, teaching over 800 children. As well as that, we ran chess camps, seminars and tournaments (both individual and team). The COVID pandemic created serious challengers, but the school adapted to them by providing online lessons and camps, attended by over 400 students in 2020-2023. Chess is ideally suited for the online environment and I continue running weekly online classes, which are particularly attractive for those students living outside of Dublin. For these classes we use Zoom and an Indian platform called Chesslang – during the first part of the lesson students learn various aspects of chess (tactics, strategy, openings, calculation, endgames, etc), while during the second part they play each other in training exercises or training tournaments.
Since the end of the pandemic, I’ve been restoring chess classes in most of the schools where we operated them before. I also run a chess club for juniors in Mount Merrion Community Centre, which meets on Tuesdays between 19:00 and 20:00. Our next tournament for juniors will take place on the 8th of March 2025 – for more information and to sign up, see our Google form. In early 2025, I will run two chess camps in St Michael’s College: mid-term camp on 17-21 February and Easter camp on 14-17 April. We continue running weekly online tournaments in our club at www.chesskid.com – our students can avail of a special price for CK gold membership – a full year for just €30 (€50 for two siblings). Gold membership allows unlimited access to videos, lessons and puzzles at the site, as well as access to our online clubs and tournaments.
In addition, I will soon run two online courses for adults: ‘Chess for Adult Beginners’ on 24 February – 6 March 2025 and ‘Understanding Modern Chess’, a course for adult players, 24 March – 3 April 2025.
To receive updates on our events (lessons, club, camps, tournaments, etc), please sign up to our mailchimp mailing list using a form below. I’ll appreciate it if you share information about our chess school with other interested people!
Grandmaster Alex Baburin, FIDE Senior Trainer, February 2025
Chess in the Irish Media:
A big article on chess appeared in the Irish Times; Alex Baburin gave an interview to the South East Radio; Hannah Lowry O’Reilly and Jonathan O’Connor were at the Claire Byrne show and a UCD student Robert Nielsen shot a short video on chess
