About Us

In 2004, Adam Weissbarth was an enthusiastic chess player 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 a little thought and a lot of preparation, Adam decided to make a career change and teach chess to children full-time.

Adam founded Silver Knights Chess in 2006, shortly after earning his National Master title.  In the 2006-2007 school year, Adam taught chess in 16 schools and community centers. In 2008, he was joined by his brother Daniel, also a lifelong chess player -- and Adam's first student. You can see one of their first lessons below! Later in 2008, two of their students won national championships.

We started getting more requests for chess programs than we could handle, and our focus quickly shifted to building the best possible team of staff and coaches to work with all the schools and families that wanted their children to play chess.

In 2020 we added online chess classes.  Kids and parents loved them, so much so that even after in person programs reopened in 2021, the online classes kept growing.  It started with just kids from Virginia, Maryland, and DC, but since has grown and grown, and we’ve now worked with students from all 50 states and 40+ countries on 6 continents!  Now, the online Academy program serves as a home for children of all skill levels that love chess and want to improve.  There's an easy $5 trial chess class too!

Over the years we’ve taught chess to more than 100,000 children in classes and camps!  More than 50 of our students have become state or national scholastic chess champions, but our typical student is a regular kid looking to learn a new skill and have fun.

We believe that children gain lifelong benefits from playing chess. They learn patience, respect, and the confidence that comes from doing something hard.  We aim to give children experience winning and losing in a low-stakes environment when they’re young so that as they get older, they can better handle life’s inevitable successes and failures.

It’s important to us to keep chess accessible to students and we’re proud to have a need-based scholarship program that gives out more than $50,000 of free and discounted classes each year.

We offer several ways for children to learn and improve at chess:

Our Chess Academy program teaches students from all 50 states, Canada, and around the world:

  • The best online chess classes, which feature small group lessons and lots of opportunities to practice.
  • Students range from beginners to masters
  • In-person meetups for students and coaches at National chess tournaments
  • An all-star roster of professional chess coaches including grandmasters, authors, and other high-level coaches
  • Guest events every few months, featuring star instructors like 5-time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen, Judit Polgar, the highest-ranked female player of all time, and three different US Champions.
  • Online chess camps every summer and special chess workshops throughout the year

For families located in Northern Virginia, Maryland, and DC:


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 that partnership. In October of 2024, ownership and operations transitioned back to Adam and Daniel, and in March of 2025, the company name changed back to Silver Knights.

We can't wait to teach your children chess!

Little Weissbarths playing chess