How we check the places we list

What this site is

A reference for the local chess community: clubs, cafés and bars, outdoor tables, recurring tournaments, academies, coaches and groups in Lisbon and the surrounding municipalities. It answers practical questions, such as where a game can be found on a given evening, who teaches children, or whether a club still meets.

It is not a ranking. Places are not scored, compared or recommended, and nobody pays to be listed or to be shown first. The order on each page follows the date of the latest evidence, and we say so wherever that order is used.

How a card is made

We start from what the place or its organiser publishes, such as a website, a social page or an event listing, and add what federations, councils, the press, directories and maps say about it. Each fact on a card is tied to the source that states it, with the date we read that source and a short quote in the original language.

A card's status has two lines. The venue line says whether the place is open, closed or unknown. The chess line says when we last found a dated sign of chess there: a club night, a tournament, a class. A date that lies in the future is shown as “listed for”, because an announcement is not an event that has taken place.

Some sources can only be read in a logged-in browser, such as map listings and social pages; the card names them like any other source. Reviews on map listings serve only as dated traces of activity; we do not use them to judge a place.

Official, secondary, unverified

Every source carries one of three flags. Official: the place, its organiser or its federation published it. Secondary: a third party reported it, for example the press or a directory. Unverified: material posted by users, or a claim we could not match anywhere else.

A flag describes where a fact comes from, not whether it is true. Official pages go out of date too, and a recent user post can be the only sign that a club still meets. Read the flag together with the date to decide how much weight a fact deserves.

When a fact is missing

When nothing we read states a fact, the card says “not stated by sources”. That phrase is not a judgement: it does not mean the place has no website, no fee or no room for beginners, only that we found nothing written about it. We never fill a gap with a guess or a typical value.

If you know the missing fact and can point to where it is published, send it through the form; it is added, with its date, at the next update.

What we do not measure

• We do not rate, score or rank places, coaches or tournaments.
• We do not visit places in person; everything on a card comes from published material.
• We do not check prices on site; a price is shown as its source published it, on the date we read it.
• Opening hours and session times come from the sources, not from us, and they change more often than we re-read them.
• We do not assess teaching, and we do not check what coaches say about themselves beyond what their FIDE profile shows.
• We do not check safety, accessibility or facilities such as toilets, lifts or parking.
• We do not count players or measure how busy a place is.
• A missing fact means no source stated it, not that the answer is no.

Right to reply

If you run a place we list, organise chess there or simply play there, and its card is wrong, incomplete or out of date, tell us through the add or correct form. Point us to where the correct information is published if you can. Reports are collected, checked against that source and applied at the next update of the Lisbon list.

Every correction is dated in the changes log, and a fix to a card also appears on that card. If you would rather your place were not listed at all, use the same form to tell us why.

Dates and updates

The sources behind the current data were read between 2 October 2026 and 6 October 2026. Each card shows the date we read each of its sources, so you can see how old any single fact is.

We aim to read every card's sources again within about 6 months. Between checks a card can fall behind what a club or organiser has changed. Changes to the data and to the method are recorded, newest first, in the changes log, and old entries are never rewritten.

Who runs this site

Lisbon Chess is an independent editorial project run by chess players. It has no sponsor, sells no listings and is not tied to any club, federation, academy or shop in the area.

We started it because finding a game or a class in an unfamiliar neighbourhood too often means wading through old posts and dead links. You can reach us through the form on this site; we do not publish a personal email address.

Open data

The full list is published as a dataset in JSON: one record per place, with every source, flag and date as shown on the cards. Its licence is stated inside the file.

For language models and other software, a plain-text summary with links to every page is at llms.txt.

What we left out

Candidates we looked at and did not list: 75. A candidate is left out when no source mentions chess there, when it duplicates another card, when it was a one-off event, when it cannot be checked by a name and a source page, or when it lies beyond the Lisbon metropolitan area. The dataset names each one with its reason.

Maps and coordinates

A card has a map point only when a source gives one: OpenStreetMap, a map link the place publishes, or a map listing. Where none exists but the address is known, we look the address up in the OpenStreetMap geocoder and mark the point as approximate; it may sit on the right street but not at the right door.

We never place a point by hand. Map links open openstreetmap.org, and this site loads no map tiles of its own. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL).