A new home for chess players opens up in Gurugram!
ChessBase India is launching its first-ever chess club outside Mumbai. We are bringing a chess club to Gurugram for all our chess fans in Gurugram and Delhi! We are launching it in partnership with the beautiful cafe space called Cut Coffee Paste that envisions to make this a regular weekened chess club open for all! 15 chess sets will be placed for chess enthusiasts from all across the city to come and play over the board! We are launching it with a Rapid Tournament on the occasion of International Chess Day! Read more to know about the story behind it and to register for our launch event
Chess Clubs & Spaces in Mumbai
ChessBase India has its strong presence in the city of Mumbai with three amazing spaces for chess players and enthusiasts. Each with a different energy and structure of its own, but with a shared goal of supporting the chess ecosystem. We have launched three spaces since the year 2022 and it has been an amazing journey for not just us but a lot of the players too who we have seen grow multifold in these years!
The Inception: Chess Club in a Mall
Back in March 2022, we launched the Phoenix ChessBase India Chess Club at Phoenix Marketcity, Kurla. We have been hosting a chess club every Saturday for 100 players for three years now! With our week-long biannual chess camps, simul events with strong players, FIDE Rapid events, and strong-seeded annual events, we have seen the chess community in the city thrive here.
A chess library: Temple of Chess
With our chess club being open only on Saturdays, we felt the need to have a space for chess lovers to gather, prepare/study chess, play, or watch any tournament together on all days of the week! With the generous contribution of Mr. Deodatta Modak with 1000 chess books and magazines, we launched a beautiful and spiritual space in August 2024 called the Temple of Chess in Vidyavihar, Mumbai.
Chess in a Corporate Office: Ambit Chess Club
Earlier this year, in Jan 2025, we launched the Ambit Chess Club in the cafeteria of Ambit Pvt Ltd, one of India's premier providers of financial advice and capital. Ambit has been one of the prominent supporters of chess in India with GM Vidit Gujrathi as their brand ambassador and they took a step further in nurturing the chess culture of the city by providing their office cafeteria for hosting a chess club on 1st and 3rd Saturdays every month!
Its a space for 30 players and we host a chess tournament every session with no entry fees and a prize fund of 10k completely sponsored by Ambit.
Launching a space outside Mumbai
Every time we launch a new space in Mumbai or host our chess camps or annual events here, we are flooded with comments and requests to open a space in other parts of the country, and most of these are from chess lovers from the Delhi and NCR regions!
We have always wanted to have more such spaces and clubs across the country, and the launch of "ESPRESSO DEFENSE CHESS CLUB" in Gurgaon is our first step in this direction. When we received a message from Cut Coffee Paste, a cafe situated in Gurgaon, to host a weekend chess club for our chess family, we were delighted to jump on the thought and vision of it to make this happen!
The Man Behind this beautiful thought and space!
All it took was a text from Harsh Sirohi, the owner of Cut Coffee Paste, to have create this beautiful vision of a chess club in a cafe come to life! Harsh has been a chess player and fan himself, and he always wanted to host a space for the community to come together and share a space filled with chess and fun, while sipping on their favorite coffees or grabbing a bite!
He came up with this unique name of our chess club and had a wonderful thought to share that led up to this name, "Espresso Chess Club"
I have always felt like the better player is always the one who can defend better, which is why we have defenses named after great players. Similarly, Espresso is the first thing that comes out of coffee beans. No coffee can be made without Espresso, as no great player can be without a good defense system. Thus a perfect match!
“Espresso Defense”
And whenever life throws a curveball at you, defend it with the world's two most beautiful things, chess and coffee ❤
Another person who helped us bring the common vision of Harsh and ChessBase India to life has been Kartik Krishnan, the strategist at ChessBase India!
When we received the first text from Harsh, he was prompt to respond, gauge the possibility of a chess club in the space, and get the ball rolling by helping things take shape!
His thoughts on what made him feel connected to this vision:
Harsh comes across as someone extremely passionate about chess. His vision of wanting to provide a space for lovers of chess to feel at home, goes very well with our own mission of growing the sport. It truly was a no-brainer to partner with him.
I hope, together, we are able to give the people of NCR something special.
Our Role
The team of Cut Coffee Paste will be the brawn of our chess club. They will manage this beautiful space and the logistics of the events and club sessions hosted at the Espresso Defense Cafe!
ChessBase India will be the brain of our chess club by helping with planning and organizing the chess aspect of the space by managing the chess sets, tournament formats and registrations.
Together with the power of our brain and brawn, we hope to curate a beautiful community for chess lovers in Delhi and NCR regions!
Be a part of our Launch Event
We are launching the Espresso Defense Chess Club on 20th July 2025, on the occasion of International Chess Day with a rapid tournament for 30 players!
Cut Coffee Paste has sponsored the entries and we now have the tournament FREE for all with a prize fund of 5000 INR!!
We would love to see you all at our chess club!
Click Here to Register
Where to come?
The cafe is right next to the famous Guru Dronacharya Metro Station!
Address: Cut Coffee Paste, Guru Dronacharya Metro Station, Sikanderpur, DLF Phase 3, Sector 26, Gurugram, Haryana
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A new home for chess players opens up in Gurugram!
@ 19/07/2025 by Vidhi Karelia (en) |