Western Colorado Chess

For Fun! For Game!

Welcome to the official website for Western Colorado Chess

We think chess is a really fun game and that there might not be anything more educational on this planet than the simple act of playiing a game of chess for fun and trying to win. When you play all you do is set goals, make plans, consider consequences, calculate risk, focus, and memorize patterns.

It seems to us like if success was a cake, these would be the main ingredients!

If you're looking for a place to play chess locally, a chess teacher, chess camp, or class for your kid, advice on places to play and learn chess online, what chess books are good and where to get them you can find all that information and more by clicking on the appropriate tabs in our main menu bar.

Chess Tournaments: Chess tournaments are a fun way for people to play chess and compete against new people. We think they're a great way to give your brain some good excercise, learn about good sportsmanship, and make new friends with people you otherwise might not ever get to meet. We try to keep a complete and updated list of all the chess tournaments happening in and around Western Colorado so folks can find out about them.

Chess Camps: Chess camps are a great way to get kids to study, practice, and learn chess together while having lots of fun. We contract with the city of Grand Junction Parks & Recreation Department to do 2 major chess camps a year, once during summer and once in winter. We try to make all our chess camps the funnest, most educational, safest events for kids as possible. We can almost guarantee that any kid who attends one of our chess camps will be at least twice as strong of a chess player afterward.

Scholastic Chess: Scholastic chess, sometimes also referred to as, "scholastic enrichment," are terms used to refer to chess tournaments, classes, camps, lessons, etc. for kids where chess is used as a tool to increase higher function brain activity, resulting in greatly increased learning and test taking abilities. There are almost countless studies that show that kids who get involved with scholastic chess events do much better at school. In fact, there is so much annecdotal, psychological, and scientific evidence of the scholastic benefits of chess that there is a large community of chess players who believe very strongly that introductory chess classes will eventually be a required course in all grade schools in the United States (as they are in some other countries around the world). Despite the fact that almost all of the schools in Western Colorado put zero dollars into chess there is still at least some form of scholastic chess in most of the schools, mostly these have been started and supported by volunteers who use their own time and money to run them for no profit.

Chess Clubs: Chess clubs can vary in what they do and how they operate but usually it's just a bunch of people who like to get together and play chess for fun. We post information about chess clubs which meet in Western Colorado in our events calendar. If you know of a chess club that we don't have listed please let us know.

USCF: USCF stands for, "United States Chess Federation," and is an insanely old and inneficient non-profit organization in the United States that makes a ton of profit and seems to care about nothing more than profit. They provide educational chess across the country. They publish the world's most read chess magazines, "Chess Life," and, "Chess Life for Kids." "Chess Life" comes out monthly. "Chess Life for Kids" = by-monthly. We especially and highly, highly, highly recommend "Chess Life for Kids" becasue it always has a lot of great puzzles and well written articles in it. The USCF also maintains a national ratings database for their members. We are an official affiliate for the USCF because we like their chess magazines and their ratings system.

Western Slope: "The Western Slope" is just another name used for Western Colorado, where we operate.