David Pruess

It’s my 12th birthday ! I cannot believe it’s been that long since the CCC opened its doors. It’s been a journey, so I’d like to share a quick reflection as I am waking up this morning. It may come across as a bit direct, so please forgive me in advance. ------------------------------ Reflection: When I was a teenager, my dad once took me to a chess club that met in a restaurant.If you’ve spent time around chess clubs, you know the scene: church-basement energy, and a few grumpy regulars. My dad walked in, looked around, and quietly (or not so quietly if you ask my mom!) decided he wouldn’t be bringing me back. He didn’t see a sport. He saw disorganization. Something that looked like it wasn’t worth his son’s time. That moment stuck with me. Over time, I realized something important which became a driving value of mine: if a parent who wants to support their child feels uncomfortable walking into a chess club, chess has already lost. Everything we’ve built at the Charlotte Chess Center comes back to that idea. We stopped pretending chess had to live in borrowed spaces and organized with a lower standard. We built a community in a way that treats everyone who walks through the door as someone we serve. Over the years I’ve watched a lot of trends come and go. Programs promising to produce xxxx GMs, platforms trying to gamify the soul out of chess, millions raised and dumped into speculative projects artificially flooding cash into the ecosystem only to then go away once the ideas fail, leaving holes in the community and reducing trust. Chess is a niche community built on simple principles: consistency, trust, and culture. You can copy tournament formats and programs, but culture isn’t something you can duplicate. The CCC isn’t a pop-up model. We’re here 24/7/365 providing year-round infrastructure for the chess community. Consistency builds trust. Trust builds culture. Culture builds community. I often hear discussions about the “Chess Capital.” For me, New York City will always hold that cultural title. The history there is incredible. But Charlotte has become something different: a true grassroots chess community. With no sponsors or significant contributions, Charlotte has become the city for chess players, by chess players. In 2013, about 450 unique rated players played a rated game in Charlotte across all affiliates. Today, the CCC alone brings in over 2,700 unique rated players every year. Compare that to more “famous” clubs like St. Louis or the Mechanics’ Institute, which hover around 1,200 unique players per year. We have the largest number of players per capita in the country. While we may not be the self proclaimed “chess capital”, we are the city for all chess players. To be clear, there are others who are building their own communities and cultures, and we aren’t the only ones doing meaningful work. There are too many to name, but I have great respect for Impact Coaching Network in NYC and our neighbors at the Columbia Chess Club (SC). As for me, my days of serious tournament play are mostly behind me, at least until the World Senior 📷. But chess is still part of my daily life. I play online games every day, follow major events, and stay deeply connected to the game because I believe the people leading chess communities should genuinely love the game. To this day, I still show up every Tuesday for TNA to give a guest lecture and review members’ games. I don’t have to do that anymore, but I still do. It’s personal. It’s one of the last threads connecting me to the very beginning, back when we were just a handful of players meeting at the Asian Library before the Charlotte Chess Center was even an idea. I never imagined employing 60+ staff members or running one of the largest chess communities in the country. When my dad walked into that chess club years ago, he decided it wasn’t a place worth bringing his son. Twelve years later, thousands of players walk through our doors every year. We built the kind of chess community I wish had existed when I was a kid. We’ve built a community where a kid can start in Coach Geoff’s fundamentals class and grow all the way to Grandmaster without leaving their hometown. Our team brings together the administration, education, and tournament organization that makes that dream a reality. That wasn’t supposed to be possible at all, but especially for a city like Charlotte, but we proved that it is. We didn’t build a brand. We built a community.