Greater Peoria Chess Foundation
The Greater Peoria Chess Foundation is a 501(c)3 non profit organization dedicated to encouraging chess in our community and school systems. Chess helps students to develop many life skills that will help them as they navigate with challenges that lay ahead.
Skills you learn from playing Chess
- Logical Thinking
- Problem Solving
- Goal Setting
- Self Motivation
- Actions have Consequences
- Hard Work is Rewarded
- Builds Self-confidence
- Mental Alertness
- Memory Development
- Patience
- Focus
- Learning to Look for Patterns
- Improved Schoolwork
- Better Grades
World Economic Forum’s latest job skill forecast for 2025 predicts that the most important skills will include analytical thinking, complex problem-solving, and emotional intelligence.
9 Reasons Why Your Child Should Play Chess
A more complete summary of the benefits of chess can be found Here.
GPCF Receives PPS Community Contribution Award
Peoria Public Schools awarded the 2017-18 Community Contribution Award to the Greater Peoria Chess Foundation at their June 11, 2018 Board meeting. GPCF provided chess sets and training software to PPS schools and supported a chess tournament at Von Steuben Middle School since 2017. Planned for this school year are more tournaments and a program to provide low cost US Chess memberships to students.
Visit the Chess Underground
podcast with Pete Karagianis
Aphorisms
GPCF Youth Chess Club
The GPCF Youth Chess Club (K-12) meets every Friday night 7 to 9pm at Hardee's in the Willow Knolls shopping center on War Memorial Drive. You can join us anytime for casual play with friends and school mates.
Open Chess
One Friday a month at Mark Bills School, 4-6pm. Join our coming events on Dec 12, Jan 23, Feb 20 and Mar 29.
The Kingsmen Monday night adult chess club meets at the Hardees in Willow Knolls Shoping mall, 7 to 9 pm.
Services:
Our school program consists of providing sets & boards to schools which have an active chess club or chess team which meets regularly and competes with other schools. We provide teaching chess software which can be used either with teacher instruction or placed on a computer so that students can do self learning. We also provide a curricula, complete with instructor's notes and integrated with the software so that teachers, who are not chess players, can provide beginning teaching of the game to their students. We also provide USCF membership discounts for students who participate in our organized chess competitions. All of these are free to the schools, they only need to have an active club and request the materials.
For schools that are already active we can also help provide coordination with other schools as well as a schedule of tournaments for your student's participation.
We also offer a summer chess camp, workshops, and the Monday night Kingsmen Chess Club and the Friday night Youth Chess Club at Hardee's in the Willow Knolls shopping center. GPCF provides sets and boards for the annual IESA state championships for junior high and middle schools at the Peoria Civic Center. If your group has a particular chess need please let us know and we will see how we can help.