Venerable Old Clubs Worldwide?

I’m interested in finding a list of stable old clubs in major cities. For example, the Marshall (http://www.marshallchessclub.org/index.html), NYC.

How about others? Paris? London? Stockholm? Other large cities? Rome? Madrid? When I go to look up chess clubs, the directories are filled with small clubs. I am curious about the ones that are in urban areas, and open every day.

The Mechanics Institute in San Francisco is a famous old club, and the web site
says it is open daily (chessclub.org/index.php).

Jim

That’s it?

I notice the 100+ year old Manhattan Chess Club is said to have closed, in 2002. Perhaps the Internet is causing these fixtures to vanish.

Nothing in Paris, Stockholm? How about Moscow? Budapest? Tokyo?

Google searches revealed the following:

ICC’s list of worldwide clubs:
http://www.chessclub.com/resources/club_directory/

Moscow Chess Clubs (info states 2003 copyright, so follow up is recommended).
http://www.typmoscow.com/174.htm

I noticed that listing. I was wondering though if there is any listing of particularly stable, larger clubs. That listing has hundreds of scholastic and very small clubs.

The “hundreds of…clubs” you describe are in the USA section. The non-USA sections have a number of clubs in major cities worldwide that are open most of the week.

To directly answer your question, “No. There is no summary list of clubs that match your description.”

No, something a bit more primitive.

Chess tourism might be fun. Travel the world, stopping in all the more available chess clubs. But I guess there aren’t all that many old ones anymore. (Something more primitive?) How about the Club Cafe de la Regence of Paris? Not in existence any more?

I also would like that, since I travel and like to just drop in for a few games.

I visited a chess shop in Paris and they had given me a list of clubs in Paris. I unfortunately did not get an opportunity to visit to any them. That’s the problem when you travel with a non-playing spouse. :stuck_out_tongue: If I’m going to a specific city I will try to get information about chess clubs in that city. Often they meet in cafes, and are pretty informal. Some clubs are tied in with a sports club. This was the case in Budapest.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to do a chess tour through Europe, going to tournaments in different cities, and visiting clubs or parks where chess is played.

While a ‘Chess Tour’ in Europe would be completely awesome, couldn’t we feasibly make a similar ‘Chess Tour USA’ by making a list of famous and regular Chess Clubs here stateside? There have to be club organizers who would love to get a little national publicity, along with codifying some of the best-of-the-best places to visit while traveling. Most things to get the public to visit our national chess clubs would be good.

I think somewhere on this website is a list of USCF affiliates by state, so that would be a starting point. I want to play in all 50 states one day, so I’m game. 22 down, 28 to go.

Oddly, despite playing in nearly 50 tournaments in my life, they’ve all be in the same state. I’ve never played a USCF rated game outside the state of Florida.

One of these days, I need to make the trip to one of those big tournaments elsewhere in the country, like the US Open or World Open.