Behind the Athens chess guide

What the guide covers

The guide covers the city of Athens and the other municipalities of Attica on the mainland and on Salamina: the basin itself, Piraeus and its neighbours, the northern suburbs, the western towns as far as Megara and the east and south as far as Rafina and Lavrio. It is written for someone who has moved here and wants a club, for a parent comparing lessons, for a traveller with a free evening, and for anyone asking whether a club named somewhere online is still active.

No entry is rated, ranked, paid for or recommended. Within a list, entries whose chess is confirmed or announced come first, the newest dated sign ahead of older ones, and entries that could not be confirmed come after them.

Where the entries come from

The base is the club register of the Hellenic Chess Federation and its club finder, which give every affiliated club in Attica with an address. The site of the union of Attica chess clubs, known by its Greek initials ESSNA, adds the dated part: notices that clubs post about their tournaments, and the tables of the union’s leagues and cups, which show that a club fielded a team this year. Tournament listings on a public results server show that events were played, where, and how many came. A club’s own site, where it has one, gives timetables, lessons and fees. A city visitors’ guide and a few press pieces cover the café and the shop.

Each fact on an entry ends in a small number. It leads to the source: the page, a short quotation in the original Greek or English, and the day the page was opened. An entry has two status lines. One is about the place, whether it is open, closed or unknown. The other is about chess there and gives the date of the newest sign of it; a date that is still ahead is shown as announced, because a notice is not a game.

Names are given in two scripts. On the English pages an entry stands under a Latin spelling, a transliteration made for this guide so that the names can be read and searched by people who do not read Greek, and the page of the entry gives the Greek name beneath it. The Greek pages turn the order round: the Greek name first, the Latin form beneath. A few names exist in Latin letters only, because that is how the organiser prints them. When two sources disagree, for example on an address, the entry gives both and says which page says what.

The three source labels

A source is labelled official when the club, the organiser, the federation or the union published it. It is secondary when someone else reports it: a newspaper, a city guide, a results listing. It is unverified when it is a post by a member of the public or a claim that appears in one place only.

The label says who is speaking. It does not say that they are right, or up to date: a register can keep a club that has stopped meeting, and a travel article can be the only page that describes a café. Read the label together with the date next to it.

When the sources are silent

Most clubs in Attica do not publish their opening days, their fees or whether a visitor may come, and almost none says in what language it teaches. Where no page states a fact, the entry reads “not stated by sources”. That is not a no. It means that nobody has written it where it could be read.

If you can point to a page that fills such a gap, send it through the form. It is added to the entry, with its date, when the guide is next revised.

What the guide does not tell you

• It gives no club, coach or tournament a mark, a score or a place in an order of merit.
• Nobody has visited the clubrooms for it; every entry rests on pages that were published.
• Fees are copied as they stood on the day the page was opened and are not checked with the club.
• Opening days come from the clubs’ pages, some of them undated, and can change without notice.
• The standard of teaching is not assessed, and a coach’s title is repeated as the club gives it.
• Step-free access, heating, air conditioning, parking and safety are not looked into.
• It does not count how many people turn up on a club evening.
• A blank field means the sources say nothing. It never means “no”.

If the entry is about your club

Club officers, organisers, coaches and members can all correct an entry through the write-in form. A link to the page where the right information stands lets the correction be confirmed quickly. Messages are collected and gone through together when the guide is next revised.

A correction is recorded with its date on the page of edits and on the entry it concerns. A club or venue that does not wish to be listed can say so through the same form and give its reasons.

Dates and revisions

The pages behind the present entries were opened between 12 October 2026 and 12 October 2026. The date beside each source shows how old that single fact is.

The whole guide is due to be gone through again about every 6 months. Between two revisions a club can change its evening, its room or its fees and the entry will not follow. Each revision, of the data or of the way the guide is made, is added to the page of edits with its date, and older lines are left as they were.

Who makes it

Athens Chess is an independent editorial project. It is not run by the federation, by the union of Attica clubs or by any club, takes no payment from the places it lists and carries no advertising for them.

It was started because the facts about chess in Attica are spread over a register, a notice board, results listings and dozens of club sites, each holding a part. The project can be reached through the form on this site; it publishes no personal address.

Take the data

Everything in the guide can be downloaded as one JSON file: a record for each entry with its sources, labels and dates. The file names its licence.

For language models and other software there is a plain-text outline of the site at llms.txt.

Considered and left out

Names that were looked at and not given an entry: 7. The reasons are a club on an island outside the area, namesakes in the American city of Athens, events and team leagues that are already covered by the entry of the club that runs them, national programmes with no address here, and a tournament held only once. The JSON file lists each of them with its reason.

Map positions

An entry has a map position when a source gives one or when its address can be found in the address search of OpenStreetMap. A position found from the address is marked as approximate, since it can fall some doors away from the real entrance.

Nobody places a point by hand, the site shows no map of its own, and the map link opens openstreetmap.org. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, Open Database License (ODbL).