About Us

In 2004, Adam Weissbarth was an enthusiastic chessplayer and a full-time graduate student in Statistics. A friend came across an ad from a local elementary school looking for a chess coach and passed it along. Adam responded to the ad and took the job. As soon as he started, he found that the best hour of his week was the time he spent teaching chess to the kids. After some thought and a lot of preparation, Adam decided to make a career change and teach chess to children full-time. He founded Silver Knights Chess in 2006, and in 2008, was joined by his brother Daniel, also a lifelong chessplayer -- and Adam's first student. You can see one of their first lessons below! Later that year, two of their students won national championships for the first (but not last) time.

We now teach chess in more than 350 schools in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC to more than 10,000 students each year. In addition, we teach more than a hundred summer camps and school break camps every year and we organize weekend chess tournaments throughout the school year. We have a significant need-based scholarship program to allow hundreds of children each year from low-income families to participate in our programs free of charge. We've given out more than 3,000 scholarships to date.

For students that are (or want to become) competitive, we also teach chess online through our popular Academy program. The Academy program features small group lessons along with lots of opportunities for practice. The Academy program serves students in all fifty states and around the world. Students are placed in a small group based on skill and availability, and groups range from newer players up through students who are (literal!) masters, ranked in the top 10 in the country for their age.

From 2021-2024 we were part of Magnus Carlsen’s Play Magnus Group of Companies and, later, part of chess.com. The name became Magnus Chess Academy due to our partnership with the five time world champion. In October of 2024, ownership and operations transitioned back to Adam and Daniel, and the company name is in the process of changing back to Silver Knights.