Chess in Istanbul: classes, cups and the halls between them
Chess in Istanbul runs through academies and weekend tournaments far more than through open club evenings. Children’s classes fill Saturdays and Sundays at academy branches from Beylikdüzü to Ataşehir; rated cups and numbered series take over shopping-centre halls in Maltepe, Esenyurt and Başakşehir, cafés in Kadıköy and Beşiktaş, and the halls of district municipalities. Sports clubs run many of these events, often without a room of their own, and a board to simply sit down at is rare.
Academies 11
Places to play 28
Sports clubs 14
Cups and opens 6
Offices, groups 3
Chess960 in Istanbul
No Chess960 game or tournament across a real board turned up in Istanbul, under that name or as Fischer Random or Freestyle chess. The search covered web results in Turkish and English, the titles of the Istanbul tournament sections on the chess-results server, the Istanbul entries of the FIDE list of rated events for Türkiye, the announcements of the federation’s Istanbul office, and the pages of the Satranç İstanbul and Debüt academies.
In Chess960 the pieces behind the pawns start in one of many shuffled orders, so opening preparation counts for little. Until an Istanbul club or mall puts it on a programme, it can be played online at ch960.com.
Nothing to show yet: no over-the-board Chess960 event has been found in Istanbul.
How these cards are put together
Every entry here can be traced to a page that names it: an academy’s own site, a club’s tournament on the chess-results server, a notice of the Turkish Chess Federation’s Istanbul office, the FIDE list of rated events, a municipality’s announcement. The sources behind the current cards were read up to .
Nothing is ranked: cards are ordered by the date of their newest evidence, and a detail that no page gives is written as “not stated by sources”. What the status lines mean and what the directory leaves out is explained under the method.
Is your academy, club or cup missing?
Branches open and close, tournament series move to another mall, a club finds a room of its own. If a card is out of date or a place is not here at all, a short note with a link to the page that shows it is all that is needed.