State K-12 Chess Championships 2023-2026: What the Data Tell Us

State K-12 Chess Championship tournaments in the United States have always had a special place in the chess world. In addition to qualifying the winners of various age groups for the prestigious invitational tournaments of state champions during the US Open, these events serve as flagship events for the states. They are often among the largest chess tournaments of the year for any age group and serve as a focal point for young chessplayers and school teams to build their “chess calendar” around. Having a well-attended flagship event for K-12 players is a core part of building future generations of chess players and ensuring the continued health of the chess community. Today’s scholastic players are tomorrow’s adults with a lifetime love of chess. Organizing these events comes with a heavy dose of responsibility to the chess community in each state.

Growing the Maryland K-12 Championship

In 2022, the Maryland K-12 Championship needed a new organizer. This event has a long and well-regarded history, and the prior organizer, John D. Rockefeller V, was moving on to become more involved in the US Chess Federation, where he currently serves as the Vice President. As a prolific organizer of scholastic play in the state, Silver Knights was the natural choice to step up as the new organizer of the Maryland K-12 Championship event. When taking over this event, we had a goal of – over time – significantly growing the participation in the event. Here we show the number of players during the five years we have served as organizer:

Over the same period of time, our online academy has grown to serve students in all 50 states and we created a list of all 50 state championship events as a resource for families. Naturally, we started to have some questions: 

• What was typical for a state championship event?
• How were they usually organized? 
• How many students participated? 
• Was the typical state championship event growing, shrinking, or stable? 
• Which states were doing the best job of attracting a lot of players? 
• What were they doing to make this happen? 
• How did we stack up in Maryland, both in terms of attendance, and in terms of growth?

Collecting Nationwide Data

What began as a series of questions – things we were curious about – turned into a full-fledged research project. To answer these questions, we spent the past six months gathering attendance data on every state’s annual K-12 championship event from 2023-2026. We chose this time period because it seemed that through 2022, there was still a significant impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, and we wanted to make sure that wasn’t overly affecting the analysis. We counted each state’s individual K-12 championship event (in most states, this event also serves as the qualifier for the national invitationals). Separate qualifier events were not included.

We also reached out to every state to attempt to confirm the data. We heard back from 32 states confirming (or correcting) our data. In many of these cases, we were also able to have informative conversations with the organizer(s) about what they were doing, what was working, and what their challenges were.

Then we analyzed the data, looking for states that were having success and what could be learned from them. We looked at the states that showed the most consistent growth, states with the largest events (adjusting for population), and also whether factors like median household income had an effect on a state’s ability to draw large numbers of players. (Spoiler alert: only a little!)

A word of caution before the numbers. We did our best to get every figure right, and we checked with every state that would respond. But we gathered this data by hand from many sources, and we may still have made mistakes. If you spot one, please let us know and we’ll correct it.

It’s also worth saying clearly that attendance isn’t the only measure of a good state championship, and not every state is trying to run the largest possible event. Some states may prefer a smaller championship focused on their strongest players, or put their energy into local tournaments, leagues, and other programs throughout the year. Those are legitimate choices. Our goal is to learn from the states that have grown their events, not to grade anyone, and a lower ranking here doesn’t mean a state’s scholastic chess community isn’t thriving.

Raw Attendance

Before adjusting for population, we first present the raw attendance numbers, drawn from USCF rating data and, for unrated sections, from figures provided by the organizers.

The following table shows raw attendance over the past four years for the 10 largest events in 2026. The full table for every state is in the appendix.

Of course, no one should be surprised to see New York with the largest event given its high population and unique chess culture. But what can we learn from the rest of the states?

Adjusting for Population

Raw attendance mostly tells you which states are big. To compare a state of 11 million people with a state of 4 million, we adjusted for population. The metric we’ve chosen is “Players Per Million residents,” or “PPM”: a state’s championship attendance divided by its population in millions. We used 2025 population figures for all four years.

For example, North Carolina’s 2026 championship drew 530 players, and Oregon’s drew 359. But North Carolina has about 11.2 million residents and Oregon about 4.3 million. That works out to 47 PPM for North Carolina and 84 PPM for Oregon: North Carolina had about 50% more players, but Oregon reached nearly twice as many kids relative to its size.

Are K-12 Championship Events Growing or Shrinking?

The first thing we looked at was whether the typical state championship tournament has changed in size from 2023-2026. The table below covers the 43 states (counting Northern and Southern California separately) that held an event in all four years.

Overall, state K-12 chess championship participation was stable during this time period, neither growing nor shrinking. The median PPM ranged from 41 to 47, and the average ranged from 59 to 62. The 2026 median of 41 looks like a dip, but it isn’t one: in 2026 there is a gap in the middle of the list, between Idaho (41) and North Carolina (47), and the median happens to land at the low edge of that gap. The average, which doesn’t depend on a single middle state, held steady at 62.

This prevailing stability is important for the subsequent analysis of state data. It is not the case that 2023-2026 was a “chess boom” where participation rates were generally trending upward on a national basis, nor was that period a “chess bust” where participation rates were suppressed by externalities, as was the case during the COVID pandemic. Against this relatively stable backdrop, we were able to look for significant outliers and patterns in the 2023-2026 data.

Consistent Growth

Here, we’ve highlighted the five states that held a scholastic tournament in each of the years 2023 through 2026, had growth in attendance every year, and for which the 2026 attendance was at least 25% more than the 2023 attendance: Maryland, Oregon, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Nevada.

What can we learn from these states? What we heard suggests there are two different ways to grow: doing many small things well, year after year, or finding one big idea that changes who shows up.

Many small things, done right: Maryland and Minnesota

In Maryland, there was no single breakthrough. Instead, we focused on a handful of things:

• Inviting every school. We searched for every school in the state with a chess club listed on its website and contacted each one directly to invite them to the state championship.
• A site big enough to grow into. Through a personal connection, we secured a very large high school as the venue.
• Being friendly to new families. We worked hard to be responsive to questions, and we hold parent information sessions at our tournaments that explain how a chess tournament works.
• In 2026, Danny Rensch of Chess.com joined us as a special guest.
• Celebrating the winners. Local television news coverage of our champions (including a video featuring two of our winners, Stella and Kai) helped build excitement for next year.

Minnesota grew 30% in the same period, and when we asked the Minnesota State Chess Association what was behind it, they described a similar approach. John Bartholomew, MSCA President, listed the success factors he has observed, including:

Having an organized, active, and engaged board… Keeping entry fees as affordable as possible… NOT requiring an MSCA membership for the State Scholastic… Digital outreach (email blasts) to MN schools… Having ample volunteers and good TDs during the event itself.

He also pointed to practical details: carefully choosing sites (location, room sizes, parking, food options), consulting coaches about team rooms, and managing registration and bye requests promptly. MSCA Treasurer Tim Radermacher, whom John credits as “a HUGE driving force behind the MSCA’s success,” added several more. The MSCA holds a scholastic coaches meeting during the tournament each year, which “has really helped generate ideas for further success in subsequent years.” And the state championship is the culmination of a season:

We have some online high school and middle school chess leagues that lead up to the big March event […] this generates momentum for many new players to feel “ready” for the state scholastic tournament.

Both Maryland and Minnesota reach out to every school, make the event easy and welcoming for families, and have organized, engaged people running it. Minnesota also keeps costs down by not requiring a state membership to play, a theme that comes up again below.

One big idea: Oregon

Oregon has achieved notable success in a unique way. Phil Schapker Mendez, President of the Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation, shared data showing that the primary growth in their individual scholastic championship event is attributable to more girls playing, with the share of girls at the event growing from 13% in 2023 to 24% in 2026. The change behind it took effect in 2024: Oregon’s Coed State Team Championship requires that two of the five players on each team be girls. As Phil explained:

Scholastic chess in Oregon has benefited greatly in recent years from the sustained and coordinated efforts of many local chess organizations that have prioritized inclusiveness and lowered barriers to entry for players from all backgrounds, including low-income and rural players, girls, and players with disabilities. The biggest influx of new players participating in state-level chess in Oregon is from a surge in girls joining chess. We believe the Coed State Team Championship, which mandates that 2 of the 5 players on each team are non-male, is one of the biggest drivers of this change.

By taking an already well-attended team event and adding a requirement that each team have two girls, Oregon ensured that boys all over the state recruited girls to join them at a chess tournament. Many of these new-to-chess girls appeared to enjoy tournament chess, stuck around, and later participated in the individual state championship.

One interesting wrinkle to Oregon’s success – their skyrocketing number of girls playing didn’t come at the expense of boys; over the four-year time period we measured, the number of boys participating also increased. Many states want to encourage more girls to play chess but don’t know how. Oregon showed that it can be done with the right blueprint.

The Top States, Adjusted for Population

The following table shows the top 10 states ranked by 2026 PPM (the full table is in the appendix):

PPM rounded to the nearest whole number. Oregon (84.0) is just outside the top 10, a fraction behind Nevada (84.4).

The top 10 states are somewhat different once you adjust for population. We were happy to see our event in Maryland still in the top 10. Interestingly, New York remains in the top 10 but is no longer #1. We must admit that the top five – Vermont, Washington, North Dakota, Kansas, and Hawaii – would not necessarily have been the first states we would have predicted in advance.

So what were those five states doing that was working so well? Are they doing anything in common that other states could learn from? Actually... yes! There was one enormous, glaring feature that the top four states all had in common. All four – Vermont, Washington, North Dakota, and Kansas – offered USCF-unrated sections not requiring USCF membership that attracted significant turnout. The specifics varied:

• Vermont has only the sections that serve as qualifiers for the National Invitationals rated, with all other sections (including championship sections) being unrated.
• Washington has large “under” sections that are not USCF-rated (note that they are rated with the free, regional northwest rating system).
• North Dakota’s event is entirely unrated.
• Kansas has two of the four age groups unrated.

We found very few other states that offered any kind of unrated sections. We spoke with representatives of the event or the state affiliate of each of these four states to learn more. For the most part, the reason for offering unrated play was to keep the cost down for all players, particularly less-experienced players and younger players from less affluent families. In the words of April Royan, Vermont’s Scholastic Chess Coordinator from 2024-2026:

We found the cost of USCF membership to be a barrier to entry for younger players who often attend the VT State Scholastic as their first competitive chess event (and often only competitive chess event of the year). After speaking with players and parents, we learned that younger players found the idea of mandatory ratings, clocks, and notation intimidating. In addition, we found many schools were eager to start chess clubs and participate in the team competition, but were finding it difficult to fundraise for both registration fees and USCF fees. We want as many kids to participate as possible. Our goal is to get players to love chess first, then ease their way into rated sections as they grow.

And here’s what Josh Sinanan, Washington Chess Federation President, said about Washington’s rationale for primarily offering USCF-unrated play:

We're at about 1/3 of the tournament playing in the USCF-rated Championship sections and 2/3 of the field playing in the NWSRS-rated Premier sections.  In many parts of the State, especially outside the greater Seattle/Bellevue area, there's not much in the way of USCF rated tournaments being run, and many organizers run completely NWSRS rated events.  This is mainly due to a lack of USCF certified TDs and organizers who want to keep the costs for the families as low as possible.  Many of the tournaments run in Pasco, for instance, charge only a $15 early entry fee compared with 45 - 60 for a similar tournament in Seattle or Bellevue.  So most of the players at our State Scholastic Championship have an accurate NWSRS rating based on qualifying through an NWSRS rated event, but probably haven't played in a USCF rated tournament unless they visited the Seattle/Bellevue area.

The other reason is to keep the event affordable and as low cost as possible for many of the large teams attending from title 1 schools.  The majority of their players sign up before the first entry deadline and play in the premier sections, so don't need the USCF membership.  This keeps the event accessible for many and lowers the barrier of entry as much as possible for those requiring financial assistance.  The proceeds from previous years' State Scholastics go towards providing scholarships to cover the USCF memberships in case the fee is a burden for those families.

This finding – that the top four states (adjusted for population) all offered significant unrated sections – we consider to be the largest single takeaway from this research project. We hope it prompts serious thought among USCF leadership about how to position youth memberships over the coming decade. It seems possible that the cost and complexity of a USCF membership, while seemingly modest, are indeed barriers to entry for a significant number of young players.

A closer look at the top five

Unrated play was the one thing all four of the top states shared. But it wasn’t the only thing they did well, and they were generous in telling us what else has worked.

Vermont (#1). Vermont’s organizers point first to steady, multi-channel marketing. They reach families through email, social media, local librarians, and the schools themselves, using the Vermont Principals’ Association to share the event with every school in the state. They automate as much of that work as they can, but they still put up plenty of old-fashioned paper flyers in schools and on town bulletin boards.

Second, an easy registration process. Vermont’s registration website, built by its treasurer, Mark Royan, is designed to be simple for first-timers and experienced players alike.

Third, cost and simplicity: Vermont doesn’t require USCF membership outside the national qualifier sections.

Washington (#2). Washington is unusual in having a nonprofit dedicated to running its state championship, supported by a large group of volunteers. In our conversation with Josh Sinanan, it was clear that the state’s main stakeholders all work together to make the event a success. With such a large event, Washington’s biggest challenge is simply finding room:

The main challenge has been to find a suitable venue to host the event year after year. With its current size… there are only a few venues in the State that can comfortably host it. Trying to maintain our geographic rotation of two years on the west side of the state followed by one year in the eastside has also been challenging, since venues such as the Spokane Convention Center keep getting more expensive.

Washington’s answer has been to bring in the right expertise. To secure convention space, the organizers have help from a well-connected volunteer with deep expertise in real estate and contract negotiation.

North Dakota (#3) and Kansas (#4). Both states confirmed their attendance figures, but shared less detail about what drives their success. We do know the key fact they have in common with Vermont and Washington: North Dakota’s event is entirely unrated, and Kansas runs two of its four age groups unrated.

Hawaii (#5) took a different route to the same goal, which we cover next.

Making New Families Welcome

Through interviews with the top states, one other common thread emerged. This was a strong desire to make the event accessible and friendly to new families. Offering unrated sections was a component of this, but it wasn’t the only way these states accomplished it.

Hawaii rounded out the top 5, and our interview with Scott Middleman, the President of the Hawaii Chess Federation, revealed a similar mindset. Although Hawaii’s event is 100% USCF-rated, the HCF has done a significant amount of fundraising which has allowed them to make the entry fee for the event $0. That’s right – as long as the child is a USCF member, they can register for the state championship tournament for free. This has allowed Hawaii to make the event very affordable for players of all socioeconomic levels. As Scott put it:

Our mission is to make chess accessible to as many K-12 students across Hawaii as possible. Thanks to the generous support of our players, families and coaches, our donation and fundraising campaigns have raised enough money to allow us to run free monthly scholastic tournaments for the past two years, including our state championships.

But the desire to be accessible and friendly to new families didn’t stop with the price. The HCF also described modifying the format of their non-championship scholastic events in an effort to reduce the percentage of new players that lose all their games at their first event. This is something we’ve tried in Silver Knights tournaments, and the early signs are encouraging that it may be increasing the retention rate of new tournament players. 

 

Income Matters, but It Isn’t Destiny

We also wanted to examine the relationship, if any, between a state's median household income and the number of players its scholastic championship draws.  The chart below plots each state's 2025 median household income vs its 2026 PPM.  A least squares trend line is also shown on the chart.

The trend line indicates a mild positive association between these two variables.  The nature of the data, however, precludes trusting the results of traditional linear regression diagnostics, such as testing whether the slope of the least squares trend line is significantly different from zero.  One reason these data preclude supporting the results of such diagnostic tests is that the vertical distances between the data points and the trend line tend to increase as the population size increases.   

Nevertheless, an examination of the four data points sitting farthest above the trend line provide an interesting story.  These four states, Vermont, North Dakota, Kansas, and Washington, are exactly the four top states by PPM and each offers unrated play. Three of them, Vermont, North Dakota, and Kansas, have median household incomes ranging from 7% below to 2% above the national average. Washington is a higher-income state, but its PPM is still more than double what is indicated by the trend line. No other higher-income state comes close to having an attendance value that much higher than is shown by the trend line. 

In other words, income sets a rough baseline, but the states that most outperform it are the ones that lowered the barriers to entry. Household income makes some difference but it is far from destiny.

What Holds States Back

We also considered the states lower down on the list. What were the struggles and challenges that prevented these state championship events from realizing their potential? A few patterns emerged in gathering our data and conducting interviews:

States where the main stakeholders did not have a common vision for the success of the championship event struggled. In states like Washington, Hawaii, Maryland, and Minnesota, the primary stakeholders were all aligned and trying to achieve the goal of a well-run, well-attended event. Washington in particular described a culture of cooperation and respect, even among chess coaches and academies that are nominally competing with each other.

The opposite was true as well. States without this culture struggled to attract participants, and in a number of cases not even agreeing on what the true state championship is or who gets to run it. Another common thread among states with lower PPM was situations where the largest scholastic chess program in a state did not participate in the state’s chess infrastructure or send students to the state championship.

Recommendations

While we didn’t initially set out to provide a blueprint for state organizations to follow, it’s hard to resist the temptation to summarize some of the best practices we found as we analyzed the data and interviewed state leaders throughout the country. So here are our top five recommendations for state chess leaders that want to grow participation in their state’s flagship K-12 event:

1. Lower the cost of a child’s first tournament. The top four states (adjusted for population) all offer a way to play that doesn’t require a USCF membership. While unrated play is anathema to some organizers, that pattern is impossible to ignore. Hawaii (#5) shows another route: keep the event fully rated, but fundraise to make entry free. Either way, the question is worth asking: should a child’s first tournament also be their most expensive?
   
   
2. Make new families feel welcome. Vermont (#1) counts its easy-to-use registration website among its top reasons for success. In Maryland, we hold regular parent information sessions, both in person at tournaments and online, that explain to new parents how chess tournaments work; in Hawaii, they changed the format of all scholastic events to ensure that fewer brand-new players lose every game. Plain language instead of “chess lingo,” friendly TDs, and quick answers to questions all make a first-time family more likely to come back.
   
   
3. Reach every school. Maryland contacted every school in the state with a chess club. Vermont reaches every school through the Vermont Principals’ Association. Minnesota sends email blasts to schools across the state. Missouri (another state that outperforms its income baseline) reported mailing annual flyers advertising the state championship tournament to every school in the state. Don’t assume families will find the event on their own.
   
   
4. Learn from Oregon’s success at getting more girls into chess. Oregon took an already well-attended event, their team championship, and by making one simple rule change (requiring at least two of the five players to be girls) they ensured that boys all over the state recruited girls to join them in competitive chess. Many of those new-to-chess girls enjoyed their first chess tournament and stuck around, resulting in significant growth in the Oregon individual K-12 championship event.
   
   
5. Get the right people working together. Washington (#2), Hawaii, Maryland (#8), and Minnesota all benefit from stakeholders who share a common goal: a well-run, well-attended event. That starts with an organized, engaged board and enough volunteers and good TDs on the day. As the event grows, it also means bringing in the expertise it needs, as Washington has with contract negotiation for its venues and experienced TDs from out of state.
   
   

Questions for Future Research

As we gathered and analyzed data, conducted interviews, and tried to synthesize the information, we also gave some thought to potential next steps in this research. In this section, we’ll simply highlight a few interesting questions that came up that we didn’t have the time to answer:

1. How does this data vary by elementary school vs middle/high school?
   
   
2. Is geography a factor? This is a complicated question, and we were not able to come up with a method of testing it out that satisfied us. But it appears possible that, for example, states like Florida or Pennsylvania, which are not only geographically large but also have many population centers that are far from each other, have some challenges in fielding a really large event. Note that Kansas and Missouri also fit this geographic profile but perform well by PPM, so there are counterexamples. (It seems less plausible that this challenge is true for every geographically large state, as many large states have a significant percentage of the population living within one hour of the largest city – for example, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Maine, etc.)
   
   
3. Do entry fees predict attendance? Hawaii made its championship free to enter, and Minnesota keeps fees as low as possible. Collecting every state’s entry fee would let us test whether price matters on its own, inclusive of the cost of a USCF membership.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Luke Everett and NM Sid Schwartz, both long-time Silver Knights chess coaches, for their help with this project. Luke helped with brainstorming, editing, and organizing, and Sid, a retired statistician who worked for the federal government, helped with the statistical analysis. Thank you also to the organizers and state affiliates who took the time to confirm their numbers and tell us what has worked for them. This article wouldn’t have been possible without them.

If you have a correction, your own state’s data, or a story we should hear, we’d love to hear from you. 

Appendix - Methodology for Gathering Data

1. For gathering attendance data
   
   
1. Searched USCF database for all events during the relevant time period. In most cases, it was obvious. We attempted to disregard all duplicate appearances of a player in multiple sections, all extra-games sections, all sections labeled blitz, and all sections for non-scholastic players (e.g., some states hold a tournament for adults, college players, or veterans at the same time and location as their K-12 championship event).
   
   
2. In cases where a state runs multiple rated events that comprise a “state championship,” we attempted to exclude duplicate players, i.e., if a particular player participated in both the K-6 championship event and the K-12 championship event, we only counted that player once.
   
   
3. We treated Northern and Southern California as separate entities entirely, as USCF does.
   
   
4. Wisconsin and Tennessee hold their events in November, rather than in the more typical January–April window, so we counted each of their November events as the following year’s event (for example, the November 2025 event appears as “2026” in our tables).
   
   
5. Separate qualifier events were not counted.
   
   
6. Unrated sections don’t appear in the USCF database, so for those we used attendance figures provided by the organizers.
   
   
7. Whether it was obvious or not, we reached out to state affiliate to confirm or correct data. Most, but not all, responded.
   
   
8. Of course errors are possible, particularly in the states where we did not receive a response; however, we believe the data are largely correct.
   
   
2. For population data, we used 2025 figures. Because the population data doesn’t change much from year to year, we simply used the 2025 numbers for all years.

Appendix - Full Attendance Table

Attendance at each state’s K-12 championship, ordered by 2026 attendance. A dash means no event was held (or that we were unable to find evidence of an event either in the USCF database or through our outreach to the state affiliate).

Appendix - Players Per Million by State

Players per million residents (PPM), rounded to the nearest whole number and ordered by 2026 PPM. A dash means no event that year.