The West Coast Chess Federation was founded by Basil Ellman and established in 2011 in Vredenburg, Western Cape. We started out as one club and today stand strong with 10 Clubs in areas like Saldanha, Vredenburg, Langebaan, St.Helena Bay, Malmesbury, Porterville, Vredendal, Lamberts bay and Citrusdal.

The organisation is registered with the West Coast Sport Council, the Provincial Chess Council, CHESS SA (the national body), which is in turn a member of SASCOC (Olympic committee) and FIDE (the world chess body).

We are currently building the West Coast Chess federation with limited resources. We would like to contribute to the academic development of the children in our local community and we believe that chess will help us achieve this. We would also like to encourage West Coast learners to participate more competitively in chess on a provincial, national and international platform.

Our dream is to have a chess school on the West Coast to develop cognitive skills and to thoroughly train our players.