Annex Chess Club is pleased to launch its new website as of March 15, 2023.

You'll notice a new refreshed logo, designed and gifted to ACC for its website go-live by Jeff Kumagai of Oddball Creative Services in BC. It's still to be approved by ACC's Board, so it could be tweaked or even replaced. Once again, the focus is on the Knight. It's such a unique and interesting piece in the game of chess. Our motto is still Chess for Everyone! and it's part of our logo and branding. We've kept our old logo in some of our webpage footers, as a reminder of the Club's origins in 2010.  The original ACC logo was designed by the talented cartographer/graphic designer, Bettina Kuypers (dec.).

Our new website is designed to have the look and feel of a newspaper. Visitors to the site can skim the material presented, learn a lot about the Club very quickly, and over time visit on those sections that appeal most to them. Our old website was focused on what's new at the Club, but now we've decided to display more useful and interesting content to those people who are either coming back to chess after a long absence, or are completely new to the game. It's also important to know what's not new at the Club. Depending on where people are in their chess journey, their interests may be weighted differently—a relative mix of classes (learning), low-stress chess (casual play) and competitive chess (tournament play and special events). So we are now presenting a balanced perspective for all types of players.

Besides the new website, we've also added new integrated, online registration systems for memberships (JOIN US), weekly tournaments, classes and special events. We hope these serve our members and other customers well.  We think it's pretty cool that our new website and systems were essentially completed within a span of less than three months! We've also added an Online Store which we hope to develop more over time. We're sorry to see our old Wordpress site go—it served us well for a long time. But ACC continues to evolve and as they say, "the only thing that's constant is change itself." 

At Annex Chess Club, a non-profit organization, we're really proud of our People and Governance and that means everyone involved in helping move the Club forward to the next level, in its ongoing story. We have a wise and experienced Board (all chess players who come and play most weeks), talented and passionate instructors, and some exciting player-members that hang out at our 918 Bathurst Centre home every Monday evening. There's also a regular group of ACC players who go out for a frosty beverage at a local pub (El Furniture, Insomnia or Paupers) after we tear down the Club each Monday, around midnight.

We're proud of our legacy especially Ted Winick, our founder, who used to personally greet Club members and parents as they came through the doors most Monday nights. Ted really embodied the Club's spirit and promoted a sense of belonging to "the ACC community." More than anything, 918 Bathurst is meant to be an emotionally safe space where everyone is treated with proper respect and can enjoy playing and learning more about chess. Our primary goal is that our Members and visitors to the Club have a joyful chess experience every Monday night.