Fifteen years of teaching Kolkata to think three moves ahead

We started in one room above a sweet shop in Gariahat

Kolkata Chess Academy began in 2011 with eight students, one demonstration board and a rented room above a sweet shop in Gariahat. The idea was simple and slightly unfashionable at the time: teach chess the way a school teaches mathematics — in a sequence, with homework, and with someone checking the work. Fifteen years later we coach around a hundred and twenty students a week across four batches, from six-year-olds learning how the knight moves to rated players preparing for state selection. The method has not changed much. Every student keeps a game notebook. Every loss gets analysed before the next class. Nobody is taught an opening they cannot explain. We are not a coaching factory and we do not promise grandmasters. What we promise is that a child who stays with us for two years will think more clearly under pressure, lose more gracefully, and understand why they lost — which turns out to be useful well beyond a chessboard.