Our story

Chess World is Australia's dedicated chess shop. We have been selling chess sets, boards, pieces and clocks from Melbourne since 1994, and the name is older than that. If you have bought a chess set in this country in the last thirty years, there is a fair chance it came through us.

A shop with more history than most of its customers

The Ormond shop. Every set on these shelves had been picked up and argued over before it went on sale.

The name Chess World first appeared in Sydney in the 1970s, on a shop connected to Cecil Purdy, the first World Correspondence Chess Champion and the finest chess writer this country has produced. That shop closed, the name went quiet, and in 1994 Chris and Meagan Depasquale brought it back to life on Nicholson Street in Carlton, a short walk from the Melbourne Chess Club.

It was mostly a bookshop then. Shelves of openings and endgames, a few chess sets, and chess videos on VHS at $49.95 each. You had to rewind them when you finished. We have kept the love of the game and quietly let the videotapes go.

The Cordover years

David Cordover across the board from former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. The shop has hosted stronger players, but few with better manners.

In 1999 David Cordover, a former Australian Junior Chess Champion, took over the shop and moved it to North Road in Ormond. He trimmed the books, filled the shelves with chess sets, and brought the first giant chess sets into Australia from Germany. When demand outgrew the supplier, he worked with a factory to make them properly, and giant chess has been a Chess World speciality ever since. Somewhere in there he also moved our tournament sets to a maker who could keep up with every school and club in the country ordering them at once.

The Ormond shop closed its doors in January 2019 and Chess World moved online, which turned a Melbourne shop into an Australian one. The stock did not go anywhere. It lives in our warehouse in Moorabbin, where you are welcome to come and pick up your order and hold the pieces before you decide.

The mural on the wall of the old shop. We miss the wall.

Then Joanna arrived

Joanna, playing our Giant Chess.

Joanna Prokopova has run Chess World since April 2024, and she came to it the long way round. She learned chess from her grandfather and her father, played tournaments as a girl, and at fifteen decided the arbiters had the more interesting job. So she became one. Then an organiser, then a lecturer, then chair of the Czech chess arbiters' commission, a board member, and a working member of arbiter commissions for the European Chess Union and FIDE.

She holds a degree in applied physics, which she says is useful for exactly one thing in this job: working out how heavy a marble set is before we post it. Working with David on Tornelo, the tournament platform used by federations around the world, brought her to Australia. Selling chess sets to the people who play on them brought her full circle.

In her words: "All the friends I have ever made, I met through chess. I do not know anything else."

Under Joanna the shop has been rebuilt for the century it is in. Every set is photographed properly, every description says what the thing is and what it does, and when a customer asks for something we cannot find, we design it. The Paris Coffee Table Chess Set exists because customers kept asking where they could keep the pieces. She flew to India to sort it out.

What we actually believe

Chess is a game you cannot play alone. Before the first move, you have to find another person and sit down across from them, and for the next hour it does not matter how old either of you is, what you earn, where you were born or what you believe. The board makes you equal. We think the world could use more of that, and we think a beautiful set on the table makes it more likely to happen.

So we choose our range by hand. Real wooden chess sets carved in India and inlaid in Spain. Marble and alabaster sets that are cool to the touch and different every time. Tournament chess sets for schools and clubs at a price that lets everyone play. Giant chess for lawns, travel sets for glove boxes, chess clocks for the competitive, storage boards for the tidy. Something for every table, every budget and every kind of player. There is a right chess set for everyone, and finding it is the part of the job we like most.

Modest yet lovely showroom in our Moorabbin warehouse

How we work

We know the pieces. Between us we have arbitered at national and international level, run tournaments across Europe and Australia, and played more games than we would admit. Ask us anything. We will tell you which set suits a seven-year-old and which one will still be on your table when they are thirty.

We say what a thing is. If a board is veneer, we call it veneer. If a set is heavy, we say so and tell you why that is good. We would rather lose a sale than sell you the wrong set.

We ship everywhere in Australia, free. Orders leave Moorabbin on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with a tracking number and, more often than not, a handwritten note in the box.

We like to hear from you. Email, phone, or the warehouse door. Bring the board you already have and we will find the pieces to match it.

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