Lets bring chess back to Banjaluka!

Hello, we are non-profit chess club „Gambit“ from Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina which gathers young chess players, students and chess enthusiasts. Our chess gatherings last since February 2008 but now for the first time in last 10 years we got space for our chess activities. We didn’t get any help from our government and chess institutions because chess in our country is completely marginalized.

For those of you who didn’t know Banja Luka was quite popular in modern chess history as a host to a lot of world-class grandmaster tournaments. For instance, even the names like Garry Kasparov, Viktor Korchnoi, Tigran Petrosian, Maia Chiburdanitze and many others were participants in those tournaments. Garry Kasparov’s first ever won all-grandmasters tournament was exactly in Banja Luka in 1979. (For more details about that tournament visit: http://www.chessdiagonals.ch/402840532) It’s very sad to say that last FIDE standard international chess tournament was organized in Banja Luka 10 years ago.

Because of that, the primary goal of our club is to bring chess back to our town. The first step to that cause was to rent a space for our chess activities. The second step was getting chess equipment. We’ve completed the first step, also we bought chairs and tables. The second step was getting chess equipment and it is partially done. We bought 20 chess tables and figures, but only 3 chess clocks and we need 17 more for which we don’t have funds, because all we bought, we bought using only our funds.

We want to organize series of chess tournaments every year (18 tournaments in 2018) which will end with one grand tournament, weekly chess training for students, and chess school for children.

To accomplish all these goals we need 17 more chess clocks (DGT1002 https://www.dgtshop.nl/index.php?route=product/product&path=60&product_id=152) and price for all that is: 17 pieces x 33 $ = 561 $ + tax and customs (27% = 151$) which rounds up to 712$.

Thank you all in advance for reading our story, we hope that you will help us bring chess back to our town and give an opportunity to young people to learn and play chess.