Method notes
Saigon Chess collects the chess centres, clubs, tournament series and campus clubs of Ho Chi Minh City in one place and ties every fact to a page that anyone can open.
What the directory covers
It covers Ho Chi Minh City within its borders before the merger of July 2025: the inner districts, Thủ Đức, and the outer districts such as Củ Chi and Bình Chánh. Places in the former Bình Dương and Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu provinces are left out even when their pages now print a Ho Chi Minh City address. A card needs a name that can be checked and at least one page that shows chess there. Cờ tướng (xiangqi) and other board games are not included.
No place is scored, ranked or recommended, and no card is paid for. In each list the place with the newest dated record of chess comes first.
Pages behind the cards
No public register of the city’s chess clubs was found. The main record is the tournament server chess-results.com, read for 2025 to 2027: for a club or centre known only there, the card gives the organiser name as the server prints it, the venue line and the newest dated tournament.
The chains’ own branch lists and fee pages, articles on the national federation’s site, school and university news pages and one directory of teaching addresses fill in the rest. A chain branch counts as confirmed only when a dated tournament or post names that branch; a branch known only from the chain’s list stays unconfirmed, with the list as its source.
Each card names the former district its pages print, such as Quận 3, Tân Bình or Thủ Đức. Vietnam removed the district level in July 2025 and the pages mix old district names with new ward names; a card whose pages name no district reads Ho Chi Minh City.
The three source marks
Official means the page comes from the place itself, its organiser or a chess federation. Secondary means a third party reports it, such as the tournament server, a directory or a newspaper. Unverified means it was posted by users or seen in one place only.
A mark tells you who is speaking, not whether they are right: a tournament row may carry an old venue, and a chain’s branch list may keep a branch that has closed.
Blank where no page answers
Few clubs or centres in the city publish their opening days, class times, fees or whether a visitor can join without signing up. Where no page answers, the card says “not stated by sources” and does not guess from the kind of place.
If you know a page that answers one of these questions, send it through the form; the fact is then added with that page as its source.
What is not judged or checked
- No centre, club, café, coach or tournament receives a score, a grade or a rank.
- Cards rest on published pages; nobody visits a branch, a club room or a class for the directory.
- Fees are copied as a centre prints them and are not confirmed with it.
- Days and times come from organisers and can change before the card does.
- Nobody rates the teaching; a coach’s title is compared only with a FIDE profile that the card links.
- Step-free access, air conditioning, noise and parking are not checked.
- Attendance on any given day is not counted.
- An empty line on a card means no page answers it, not that the answer is no.
If a card is about you
Centre owners, club officers, organisers, coaches and players can correct a card through the form. A link to a page with the right information makes the change quick to check. Messages are read together at the next revision.
Each correction is dated under what changed and shown on the card it concerns. A centre or club that would rather not be listed can ask for that through the same form, with a reason.
Reading dates and revisions
The current cards rest on pages read from to ; the date next to each source on a card tells you the age of that fact.
The whole directory is to be read again about every 6 months. In between, a chain can open or close a branch and a club can change its hall without the card following. Every revision of the data or of these notes is logged under what changed, newest first, and older entries stay as written.
Who is behind it
Saigon Chess is an independent editorial project. It takes no money from centres, clubs, cafés or organisers, shows no advertising, and nobody pays to be listed or to be removed.
It exists because the city’s chess is scattered over thousands of tournament rows and branch lists, each holding a name, an address or a date. Read together they show where the game is played and taught, and this site keeps that reading in one place with its sources.
Using the data
The directory can be downloaded as a JSON dataset: one record per place, with every source, mark and date. The licence is stated inside the file.
A plain-text outline for language models and other software is at llms.txt.
Leads looked at and left out
Leads examined and not listed: 18. Common reasons are an organiser based in another province, a branch outside the pre-merger city, a different board game, or a forum request with no club behind it. The dataset names each lead with its reason.
Map pins
A card shows a pin only when a source gives one or when the OpenStreetMap address search finds the building itself. Most addresses here sit in alleys, shophouse rows and apartment blocks that the search cannot match, so most cards have no pin.
No pin is set by hand. There is no map on the site; the map button opens openstreetmap.org, and pins taken from OpenStreetMap are credited on the card.