Meet
Coach JB.

How I got into this.

I learned chess in kindergarten. My dad bought us this big heavy marble chess set and taught me and my brother how to play. We probably learned mostly by throwing the pieces at each other and sticking them up our nose. But eventually we figured it out. By third grade I was a decent player.

The moment chess went from a thing I did to the thing I did was fifth grade. We had a teacher who decided the whole class was going to learn chess. First day, he's standing up there explaining how the pieces move, and he makes a move I know is wrong. I called it out. He didn't believe me. So I showed him why. He realized I was good at this — and instead of brushing me off, he built a whole school championship around it.

I won. The local news came out — KSBW — to do a story about the championship. They interviewed everyone but me. I still feel scorned by KSBW. But for one afternoon, all my friends thought I was very cool for playing chess. Which is the last time that has ever happened.

That fifth-grade moment is what locked it in. I was good at something. People noticed. It became part of who I was.

Why this club had to exist.

Middle school is when most chess kids lose it. I almost did. Not because I lost interest in chess — I lost the people. By the time I hit sixth grade, the few kids who played weren't very good, and their attitudes were even worse. There was no chess community in Monterey County. None.

That's the experience that built this club. Looking back, what I needed wasn't a better app or another coach or more tournaments. What I needed was other kids who played chess. A community. And I never got it.

So I'm building it now. If I wanted it, lots of kids probably wanted it. That's the whole reason this place exists.

Why I teach kids and not adults.

I get asked this a lot. Adults pay more. Adults are easier. Adults don't put pieces in their mouth.

But kids are who I built this for. Kids show up — as Bruce Lee put it — as empty cups, looking to be filled. They don't have ideas yet about how chess "should" be taught. They just want to play. And the kids I really care about reaching are the ones whose skills lie outside of sports. The kids who don't fit on a soccer team. The kids who need somewhere to compete and belong and be on a team and build something with other people — but without the loud whistle and the screaming coach. The kids I have with special needs, ranging from very mild to more severe. Every kid deserves to be part of a team. Not every kid gets that chance through traditional sports.

That's the kid I was. That's who this is for.

How I coach (and how I don't).

I don't teach openings. Most coaches do. I think it's the fastest way to make a kid quit chess — they memorize a sequence, the opponent doesn't follow it, the kid stands up convinced they're bad at the game. They're not bad at the game. They were just taught wrong.

I teach understanding. Why pieces want what they want. Where the weak squares are. What "developing a piece" actually means. A kid who understands chess can play any opening. A kid who memorized openings can't play chess.

And I don't measure ratings. I measure whether kids show up Monday excited to play. I measure whether they put down Roblox to do chess puzzles on the tablet. I measure whether their parents catch me at the grocery store to tell me their kid won't shut up about it.

Ratings come. They come faster than you'd think when a kid loves the game. But the love comes first. Always.

The other things I do.

I'm also a realtor — ten-plus years in Monterey County. Selling houses is what put roots down for me here. I know just about every neighborhood from Carmel to Salinas, and a lot of the families in them. Real estate is how I built my life in this place. The chess club is how I give something back to it.

I'm married to Halleh and we have two boys, Cyrus and Leo, growing up right here in the valley. When I'm not at the club or selling houses, I'm cooking, taking care of our animals — about thirty chickens, two ducks, a giant dog, a house cat, a barn cat, a fish, and a beehive — and spending time with my family. The boys are why I think about all of this the way I do. What kind of environment shapes a kid. What builds focus. What teaches them to lose gracefully and win quietly. Chess does all of it. So I built the place I'd want my own kids to come to.

What I'm actually building.

I want all of Monterey County to look like Europe or Asia, chess-wise. Over there, everybody knows how to play. It's like driving a car or doing basic math — assumed. Here, most kids who walk into my club know how the pieces move and that's about it.

In ten years, I want that to be unrecognizable. I want the kindergartners I'm teaching now to be high schoolers running chess teams at their schools. I want demand for chess to be so strong across the county that other clubs open up — in Pacific Grove, Marina, Salinas, Monterey. More clubs means more players, more tournaments, more good chess. That's the dream. I want kids who started here to earn national and international titles.

That's the long game. We're less than a year in. We've got a way to go.