How Roshen's Chess Academy Was Born:

It all started in December 2018. I was a 12 year-old kid and I went to the international chess event at the North American Open hoping to gain as much experience as possible. I didn’t realize back then that my chess life is just about to make a huge turn – as a player and much more.

As a 12 year-old-kid, there was absolutely no way I could have seen what happened, not in my wildest dreams. There were 148 international players from all ages in my group and I was seeded 46th. The first surprise that came out of the blue was the unbelievable result that, after a long, tiring, 5-day tournament, I won 1st place in the North American Open bypassing the 45 higher-rated players ahead of me and had won $7000 as a clear first place winner of the U2100 section with an astonishing, undefeated score of 6.5/7.0!

(Link to final standings of North American Open: https://chessevents.com/event/northamerican/2018/standings/u2100 )

When the "Chess Life" (the official magazine for the US Chess Federation) came for the interview as soon as my final game is over, I originally couldn't speak. When I had gone to the North American Open, I was expecting to gain some experience, maybe some rating points if I was lucky. I had never imagined I would get $7000 and cross the USCF rating of 2100 for the first time with a new rating of 2125!

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to do. I was filled with the excitement of this once-in-a-lifetime win, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. My first thought was to just put all the money into my college education (after repaying my parents a little for all the travel expenses), but then I came up with an idea that required a lot of imagination. Little did I know how soon my idea would come true.

I decided to tell my parents about my crazy idea. I started breaking it down to them in little pieces: “I… would… like… to… use… some… of… my… tournament winning …money …on …creating …a …chess …club.”

My basic idea was this: I would use some of my tournament winning money to help start a chess club while putting the rest of my money into my college education. My main goal I had in mind when I came up with the crazy idea of starting this chess club was to help other kids in my community to experience the same sort of joy I had experienced when I had won the North American Open by helping them to reach some type of astounding goal. I thought that starting a chess club in my community would help me to do this.

When my parents heard this idea, I expected them to laugh at me or tell my idea was completely impossible. But they were full of support for me and told me that they would do whatever they can to help me reach this goal. For some time, I thought they were crazy too.

At this point, my family had decided on a goal, but we had no way of achieving it. My parents put a lot of dedication trying to help me start up my chess organization and spent a lot of their free time into helping this dream of mine to become reality, and I will always be thankful for that. But we didn’t make any major progress since there was only so much we could do by ourselves. That is when the help started pouring in. First, Chinmaya Mission Portland and HESCA, two non-profit organizations in the community, gave us their nice facilities for us to use as our rooms for our chess club. This was the first enormous help. Then, the Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation (OSCF), another Non-Profit Organization, provided our chess club with our first 10 high-quality chess sets. These were the major help which caused everything else to become possible.

At this point, we had all the materials we needed to start the club (after using some of my tournament winning money to buy additional chess sets, chess clocks, a chess demonstration board etc), but we didn't have any students. Then, we suddenly got messages and e-mails from many parents, asking for me to teach their kids. This was an enormous boost of support for me and that was how our original club started.

Finally on June 2019, Roshen's Chess Academy was born. We started with a relatively small group of 5-10 kids with only a few resources. Then, before I knew it, the club grew to 20 kids within a month with 6 kids on the waiting list.

Slowly we started adding more materials that were needed for the smooth running of the chess club (additional chess sets, chess clocks, chess demonstration boards, chess training software, SwissSys tournament software and some tables). Again, the funds came from my tournament winnings and financial assistance from my parents.

At this point, I decided it was time for me to create a website for our chess club. Only when I created my website did I truly understand how important school was since everything I learned from school helped me in some way or other as I created my chess club website.

Then, after a couple of months, I decided to add something extra to the chess club, a monthly tournament. I have been to so many tournaments during my life but I had never thought before about the difficulties that come with running one successfully. My dad bought the SwissSys Chess tournament software and helped me learn, and before I knew it, things started falling into place. We were able to successfully run our first quads on August 17th of 2019 and, to me and my parents’ relief, everything seemed to run smoothly. We were also able to get our tournaments officially rated on the NWSRS system with the help of Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation (OSCF).

Then my parents started working with Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation (OSCF) to implement their rules and regulations so that our tournament can operate as official OSCF state championship qualifiers. And then on September 2019, with immense help from my parents and also the backing of OSCF, Roshen's Chess Academy quads tournament became official OSCF qualifiers.

I then was able to find time to run 2 tournaments every month and six hour club teaching sessions every month and that was how everything came to be. Now after 6 months (Nov 2019), we are now running at our maximum capacity - 2 batches and 50 students!

Now, when I look back on the whole thing, I can’t believe that I was able to get so far. However, I am always full of appreciation and gratitude for all the people and Non-Profit Organizations that helped me get to where I am now. And, finally, I would like to thank my parents for aiding me every step of the way.

-Roshen Sanjay Nair (Founder of Roshen's Chess Academy)