About Us

Our Story
Founded by former Australian Junior Chess Champion David Cordover in 1997, Chess World has been the only dedicated chess shop in Melbourne since its inception. 

We boast a huge range of chess sets & boards. You can choose from themed sets, wood, stone, glass, metal or plastic.

Plus we have chess clocks, storage boxes, score books and just about anything you need to play and enjoy Chess. Something for everyone's taste and budget!

We closed our physical retail store in Jan 2019 and have made the move to a solely online store experience ever since. This allows us to cater to a larger audience and offer more products. We ship Australia wide. 

Mission

Chess is a metaphor for life. And it’s fitting that before you can even begin to play, you must seek out another human being. 

We all need to make real human connections and sadly the modern world of smart-phones, Facebook and headphones provides us with fewer and fewer opportunities to connect face-to-face.

Connecting and sharing makes us happy. Connecting means equality. In chess everyone IS equal, regardless of age, gender, upbringing, race or social status. Experiencing this equality teaches respect, compassion, understanding and empathy for all other people.

We blend aesthetic beauty, tactile experience and imagination and thought. By offering a wide variety of beautifully designed chess sets and boards we ensure every individual can find their very own unique chess set. A personal set with meaning that will be used to create lasting stories.

We invite you to share a part of yourself. To put aside differences and invite your worst enemy to play a game of chess. Invite the homeless person, the member of a different political party, the person who can’t speak your language, the person who looks different, dresses differently or believes in a different god.

Chess provides you the opportunity to connect and interact as equals. 

Values
Beauty and Design
We pride ourselves on an attention to detail in the quality of our sets and the service we deliver to our customers. Beauty: chess sets that will take pride of place and be a joy to play with.

Energetic and Passionate

We love what we do and we are excited, passionate and caring. About everything. Our energy is contagious and through this we engage our audience and can’t help but have fun!

Connectedness
We love that chess is 3000 years old, that it is steeped in romance, history and myth. We respect the generations past who created, developed, studied and shared this great game. We love community and the feeling of connection that we have with all other chess players, across the world today and throughout time.

Caring
We are all human. We believe that regardless of age, gender, race or upbringing … people are people and we treat everyone equally. We are tolerant and compassionate. Because of this belief, we respect, share with and care for others as we do for ourselves.