Where the entries come from

Area and scope

The area is the Upper Silesian and Zagłębie conurbation, each city counted on its own: Katowice, Sosnowiec, Chorzów, Czeladź, Gliwice, Zabrze, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Ruda Śląska, Tychy, Bytom, Siemianowice Śląskie, Mysłowice, Świętochłowice, Piekary Śląskie, Będzin, Jaworzno, Mikołów and Tarnowskie Góry. Every entry shows its city; inside Katowice it shows the district too when a page names one.

Nothing here is graded, ordered by merit or paid for. In each list the entry with the most recent dated trace comes first, and places that closed or moved are kept at the end of the full list.

Pages read for each entry

Clubs come first from the central register of the Polish Chess Federation for the Silesian voivodeship and from the site of the Silesian Chess Association, then from the clubs’ own sites, the pages of youth culture centres and sports centres, and city portals that print timetables.

Tournaments come from the FIDE list of rated events and from ChessArbiter, the server most Silesian arbiters use, whose pages give the playing hall and the dates. Editions that share a title are kept together as one series, with the latest and some earlier ones cited. A hall, café or school becomes an entry of its own only after hosting play on more than one day.

Each fact ends in a small number that leads to its page, with a short quotation in the language of that page and the day it was consulted. When two pages contradict each other, the entry quotes both and names each.

What the source marks mean

Official means the page belongs to the club, the venue, its organiser or a chess federation. Secondary means another party reports it, such as a tournament server, a city events page or a newspaper. Unverified means it rests on user posts or on a single mention in passing.

The mark names the speaker; it does not vouch for what is said. A club in the federation register is affiliated, which says nothing about this week’s training, so a club known only from the register reads as not confirmed.

Gaps left open

Silesian clubs publish timetables more readily than fees, and tournament pages seldom name the organiser. Many clubs of the region post their news mainly on social media, so for them the entry rests on tournament listings. Whatever no page states reads “not stated by sources”; a blank never means no.

Anyone holding a page that closes a gap can pass it on through the form; at the next revision it is checked, dated and added.

Outside the directory’s judgement

• No club, school, coach, hall or series is rated, scored or placed above another.
• Every entry rests on published pages; nobody visits the clubs, halls or cafés for this directory.
• Fees appear as printed on the day the page was consulted and may have changed since.
• Club and culture centre timetables are reset every September and can run ahead of an entry.
• Teaching is not assessed; a coach’s title is only compared with the FIDE database.
• Access for wheelchairs, lifts, parking and heating of the halls are not checked.
• Turnout is not counted, so no entry says how crowded an evening or a round gets.
• A line in the federation register shows membership, not that a club meets today.

Corrections from those listed

Club boards, arbiters, organisers, coaches, culture centre staff, parents and players can correct an entry through the suggestion form. A link to a page with the right information makes the change quick to confirm.

Every accepted correction is dated in edits and additions and noted on the entry itself. A club or person who would rather not appear can ask through the same form, and the entry comes down at the next revision.

Reading dates and revisions

The pages behind the current entries were consulted on 23 October 2026; every source carries its own date, so the age of each piece of evidence stays in view.

Roughly every 6 months the directory is read again from start to finish. In between, a club can change its room or its days before the entry catches up; the club’s or organiser’s own page always has the final say.

Who is behind it

Katowice Chess is an independent editorial project. It takes no money from clubs, culture centres, cafés, organisers or arbiters, runs no advertising for them, and has no tie to the Polish Chess Federation or the Silesian Chess Association.

It exists because chess in the conurbation is scattered over a federation register, an association site, two tournament servers and many club and culture centre pages, each holding a piece. The form lets players and clubs keep it accurate between revisions.

Reusing the data

The full directory can be downloaded as a JSON dataset, one record per entry with every source, mark and date. The licence is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: reuse is free as long as Katowice Chess is credited.

For language models and other software, a plain-text summary of the site sits at llms.txt.

Looked at and left out

Candidates examined and not listed: 16. Most are halls or events with only one dated occasion; the rest lie outside the cities of the conurbation, show no chess activity of their own since 2024, or are unnamed points on a map.

Positions on the map

An entry gets a map position only when its address was matched to a building in the OpenStreetMap address search, or when a source page gives a position; such search-based positions carry an approximate label. An entry with an address but no position offers a button that searches the address on a map.

No position is placed by hand, and the site draws no map of its own. Map data comes from OpenStreetMap contributors and is licensed under the Open Database Licence.