The Chess Effect
Welcome to The Chess Effect, where we believe in the power of chess to transform lives and communities. We were founded in 2020 by International Master Sandeep Sethuraman with the mission of making the game of chess accessible to all, and we try to accomplish this by holding fundraiser tournaments and offering free lessons. We have expanded to have chapters in Arizona and Texas with over 20 coaches who volunteer their time to serve hundreds of members.
We are a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit: That’s right! All of the profits from our fundraisers will be donated to The Foster Alliance (formerly Arizona Helping Hands). We would also like to thank our generous sponsors, LIL Venture Fund, the only Venture Fund dedicated to funding High School Ventures. Please learn more about LIL at https://www.scholarlaunch.org/leadership-innovation-lab.
Join Our Free Lessons
We offer free lessons! That’s right, we believe all players should have access to chess coaching regardless of their socioeconomic status. All of our coaches are volunteers and share a passion for both chess and serving their community.
Join a Fundraiser Tournament
Since all of our lessons are completely free, our way of fundraising is by holding tournaments, both online and over-the-board. To date we have held 4 fundraiser tournaments with over 250 participants from complete beginners to Grandmasters. You can check these out under our tournaments menu. We are looking to organize our next tournament soon and will post an update there when we have.
Join The Chess Effect Family
We are currently accepting applications to become a Chess Effect Coach. This is restricted to advanced players of high-school age or older, but we appreciate everyone’s interest in our organization. We also welcome donations that are used to fund the creation of more tournaments and lessons. All support helps us achieve our goal of giving everyone an opportunity to discover the beauty of playing chess.
The Chess Effect 