About this list

What the list covers

The list covers chess in Bangkok and the surrounding metropolitan area: recurring tournaments, academies and coaches with a public offer, clubs, social groups, cafés and bars with boards, chess shops, and school or members-only programmes. Each entry is a place or an organiser, and the regular chess at it is listed as sessions.

It exists to help the city's players, Thai and foreign, find a game, a class or an event. It is not a guide to the strongest academy or the friendliest club; it shows what the sources say and when they said it.

How we check

For each entry we open the sources ourselves: the organiser's website or social page, federation and rating records, event listings, press reports, directories and map listings. We note the day we read each one and keep a short quote, in its original language, that carries the fact.

The status follows from the dated evidence. An entry is active when a source shows chess there, unconfirmed when we found no recent trace, moved when the chess left for another place, and closed when the venue shut. A date in the future is shown as announced, not as confirmed.

What the flags mean

Official: the organiser, the venue or a chess federation published it about its own event or member. Secondary: someone else reported it, such as a newspaper, a directory or an event listing. Unverified: users posted it, or it appears in one place only with nothing to back it up.

A flag describes the source, not the place. An official page can still be out of date, which is why each flag sits next to the day we read it.

When a source is silent

If no source states a fact, such as the fee, the age range or whether boards are provided, the entry says “not stated by sources”. That is not a mark against the place; it only means we could not find it written down. We do not fill gaps with guesses, typical prices or what a similar venue does.

What we do not measure

• The quality of teaching, coaching or organisation.
• The playing strength, results or ratings of anyone who plays or teaches at a listed place.
• Prices beyond what the place or organiser publishes.
• Safety, accessibility or the condition of a venue.
• Opening hours, except where a source gives a session time.
• Whether a coach's claimed title is current, beyond what a FIDE profile shows when we could open it.
• Reviews, stars or popularity: nothing on this site is rated or ranked.

Right to reply

If you run a place, an event or a class on this list and something is wrong, missing or out of date, use the form. Include a link or another source that shows the change; a page we can open ourselves makes a correction easy to check.

Reports are not applied one by one. They are collected and read together at the next update of the list, and every change that results is dated in the history. We do not write back unless your message asks for a reply and gives a contact.

Updates and dates

The current list rests on sources read between 2 October 2026 and 6 October 2026.

The whole list is checked again about every 6 months. Nothing is edited by hand between updates: reports from the form wait for the next update and are applied then, together with what the new round of checking finds.

Each update is recorded in the history, which only grows; earlier entries are never rewritten.

Who makes it

Chess in Bangkok is an independent editorial project run by chess players. It is not a company, a club or a federation, and no names are given here because the list should stand on its sources, not on who wrote it.

Listings are not sold, and the order on a page follows the date of the evidence, not any arrangement with a place. The right to reply above is open to everyone on the list.

Open data

The whole list is available as one JSON file, the dataset, under the CC BY 4.0 licence: you may reuse it with credit to Chess in Bangkok. A plain-text summary for software and language models is in llms.txt.

What we left out

56 candidates were set aside during collection, for example duplicates, one-off events, places outside the metropolitan area and leads that no source could support. The dataset names each of them with its reason, and any can return at a later update if a source turns up.

Maps and locations

Map points come from the source named on each listing: OpenStreetMap, a map link the venue published, or a Google Maps listing. Where we looked a point up from the street address, the listing marks it as approximate, since an address lookup can land on the wrong side of a large building or soi.

Map data from OpenStreetMap is © OpenStreetMap contributors and available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL). The map links on this site open openstreetmap.org; no map is loaded inside these pages.