How this site works

What the guide covers

The area is the city of Tbilisi, with its districts named wherever a page gives one, and the neighbouring city of Rustavi in Kvemo Kartli. Mtskheta was searched too, without result.

Nobody pays to be listed, and no entry is ranked or promoted. Inside a list, entries with the most recent confirmed chess come first; closed or moved places stay at the end of the full list.

Where the entries come from

Georgia has no public register of chess clubs. The federation publishes news, a calendar and lists of licensed coaches, but no list of clubs, so the guide is built from other traces. The main one is the chess-results tournament server, whose search rows name the organiser of each event in Tbilisi and Rustavi, even when the event page shows only a title.

Next come the FIDE list of rated tournaments for Georgia, the federation's news items that name a venue, the schools' own sites, the site of the National Palace of Youth, and a business directory that prints addresses and branches. A school found only in that directory is shown as unconfirmed.

Each fact ends in a small number that leads to its source: the page, a short quotation in the page's own language, often Georgian, and the day it was read. Where two pages disagree, for instance on a street number, the entry gives both.

Source marks

A source is marked official when it comes from the place itself, its organiser or a federation; secondary when a third party reports it, as a tournament listing site or a business directory does; unverified when it rests on visitors' comments or on one isolated mention.

The mark tells who is speaking, not whether they are right. A directory entry shows that a business was registered, not that lessons are given there today.

What stays unknown

Few Tbilisi schools publish their fees or timetables, and almost no page says whether a visitor can simply walk in and play. Where a page does not answer, the entry says “not stated by sources”; a blank never means no.

Anyone who knows a page that fills a gap can send it through the form. It is checked and added, with its date, at the next revision.

What the guide does not judge

• No school, coach, club or tournament is graded, scored or ranked.
• Entries rest on published pages; nobody visits the halls for the guide.
• Fees are copied as the page printed them on the day it was read.
• School timetables follow the school year and may change before an entry does.
• The quality of teaching is not assessed; a coach's title is only compared with the FIDE record.
• Steps, lifts, heating and parking are not looked into.
• Attendance is not counted, so an entry cannot say how many players come.
• A business directory entry proves a registration, not that chess is played there now.

If an entry concerns you

Coaches, school owners, organisers, parents and players can correct an entry through the form for suggesting a place. A link to a page that shows the right information makes the change quick.

Every accepted correction is dated in the log of changes and noted on the entry. A school, club or person who prefers not to be listed can say so through the same form, and the entry is removed at the next revision.

Dates and revisions

The pages behind the current entries were read between 15 October 2026 and 15 October 2026. The date beside each source shows how old that piece of evidence is.

The guide is read through again roughly every 6 months. In between, a school may change its hall or its timetable before the entry catches up; the school's own page has the final word.

Who runs it

Tbilisi Chess is an independent editorial project. It takes no money from schools, clubs, organisers or venues, carries no advertising, and has no tie to the Georgian Chess Federation or to the Tbilisi federation.

It exists because chess in Tbilisi is spread over a tournament server, federation news, a business directory and the scattered pages of the schools, each showing one piece. The form lets players, parents and coaches keep it right between revisions.

Reusing the data

The whole guide is available as a JSON dataset, one record per entry with every source, mark and date. It is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence; please credit Tbilisi Chess when you reuse it.

A plain-text outline of the site for language models and other programs is at llms.txt.

Considered and left out

Leads looked at and not listed: 20. They include one-off tournaments with no second edition, hotels and halls that hosted a single event, cafés mentioned in travel reviews with no chess on their own pages, and coaches without a named school or a public offer.

Map pins

An entry shows a pin only when its address was matched to a building in the OpenStreetMap address search, or when a source gives a map position; a pin found by search is marked approximate. Many Tbilisi addresses are printed in Georgian script or without a house number, so few entries carry one.

Pins are never placed by hand and the site has no map of its own; the map link opens openstreetmap.org. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.