Chess across Ho Chi Minh City
In Ho Chi Minh City chess is mostly learnt in children’s centres. The chains Cờ Vua Sài Gòn, RoyalChess and T-Chess keep branches in shophouses and apartment blocks from Tân Bình to Thủ Đức, beside independent academies. Clubs and centres fill the weekends with numbered opens and rated series, student clubs play on campus, and a café in Bình Thạnh hosts rated games. Chess centres come first below.
Chess centres 54
Clubs 21
Opens and series 11
Where to play 32
Campus & school 5
Chess960 in Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnamese tournament rows on chess-results.com for 2025 to 2027 were scanned for Chess960, Fischer Random, freestyle and “cờ vua ngẫu nhiên” in titles and rules. The few such events on the national list were played in Hà Nội or give no city at all, and none could be placed in Ho Chi Minh City.
In Chess960 the pieces behind the pawns start in one of 960 shuffled orders, so memorised openings stop helping from the first move. Until a club here runs it over the board, it can be played online at ch960.com.
No over-the-board Chess960 has been found in Ho Chi Minh City so far.
How the listing is kept
The listing rests on the public tournament server chess-results.com, where the city’s organisers post nearly every event, and on the chains’ own branch lists and fee pages, federation articles and a few school and university pages. A branch counts as confirmed only when a dated tournament or post names it; a branch known only from its chain’s list is shown as unconfirmed, with that list as its source.
Inside each list, places with the newest dated record come first, and position says nothing about quality. A question no page answers reads “not stated by sources” on the card. The source marks, the reading dates and what is left unchecked are set out in the method notes.
Is a centre, club or open missing?
Chains open branches every few months, and clubs move their monthly tournaments between halls, cafés and school canteens. If a place or a series belongs here, or a line on a card is out of date, a link to a page that shows it is all that is needed.