After over a decade we have decided to switch the site to WordPress which we hope be easier for some of our members to use. We have decided not to transfer our historical articles at this stage. Perhaps we will publish some of the more interesting ones from time to time in the future. The club actually won Club Website of the Year a few years back on the strength of these articles, which were written in the early days of chess club websites. We are grateful to Michael Bennett for having hosted us with TextPattern since the beginning.

The plan is to start afresh with members’ games and match reports. It seems we are at the start of a new era, and we are wiping the slate clean. The pandemic has changed the way we do chess. We have met together online. We play in “beach huts” in the pub garden. There are several new members and some older, more vulnerable, members have been staying away.

It is extraordinary to think that the club was founded in 1875 (though we accept the evidence for its launch in that year is a little sketchy), and is still going after many transformations. We look forward to reaching our sesquicentennial year in 2025 and have begun to make plans. Our ideas include writing a brief history of Kingston Chess Club and running a chess festival in the market square in Kingston. One can never start planning too early.

The club has thrived and survived due to the diligence of a large number of people over the years. We have not taken advantage of social media as much as we could have. Traditionally, chess players moving to Kingston would seek out their local club, but those simple days have passed. Nowadays a chess club must be active on Twitter and other outlets, even if many of the members reject such platforms for themselves.

People join the club to play chess over the board. Playing online does not have the social element. Come along to the club and you will meet other people with a shared interest. Some members are very serious about improving their chess; others prefer to engage in conversations starting with chess but never limited to chess. If you want to drop by on a Monday evening you are always welcome.