Chess in JCSP Libraries

Another reason why every school should have a library is that they are the ideal venues for chess clubs!

The cognitive and social benefits of chess are well known, and the ancient game is becoming ever more popular in the age of apps and social media. A lot of students have chess.com accounts and spend some of their precious screentime playing online opponents, but nothing beats moving physical pieces with another human being in a beautiful space.

I was fortunate to inherit a thriving chess club when I took over the position of JCSP Librarian at Beaufort College two years ago. Students from all years, as well as a few staff, regularly scheduled grudge matches in the library and kept unofficial scores. I introduced a simple league system to encourage the students to play different opponents, and the number of games increased dramatically. This year I downloaded software to keep track of the scores, and have so far recorded over 1,000 matches from 200 active players since September 2024. The system even calculates a students’ “Elo”. I publish the top twenty players on the Beaufort AccessIT Web App, and direct members of the chess club to check it.

Tournaments represent an opportunity for students from different schools to interact through a shared language. However, it can be difficult to accommodate both the “serious” competitive players and the more casual players. The JCSP Demonstration Library Project is an inclusive organisation, and everyone is welcome to these events! I’ve tried a number of approaches to this conundrum over the years, but the most recent event at Trinity Comprehensive Library worked the best in my opinion. Essentially there were two streams: a 32-player, 5-round “Swiss Paired” tournament for the serious players; and “Chess Bingo” for the less confident players. The latter encouraged students to fill out their Bingo cards by interacting with different students. By happy accident (I can’t say that I had planned for it), students were able to move between events without interfering with the scoring.

Many thanks to Teresa for hosting the event at Trinity Comprehensive, Dorota for taking wonderful photographs, Elaine for creating certificates, and all of the librarians and students who came along to make it such a fantastic event! 80 competitive matches were played over the course of the day, not including any of the Bingo games, and the mood was gracious and kind. I would be delighted to run the exact same event next year… but I’m always concocting new formats as well. Please feel free to contact me if your school would like to have a go at some of Beaufort College’s 200 chess players, and I’ll figure something out 😉