[5][6] The company was founded in 1998 by chess enthusiast David Cordover, who was only 20 years old at the time.
The start-up funds were provided by the cash prize when Cordover won the Nescafé Big Break Award contest for his business plan vision of bringing chess to every school student in Australia.
[3][5] In the April 2008 issue of Teacher magazine, Chess Kids' founder and chess enthusiast, David Cordover wrote that during the five years since the founding of the tournaments, participation in the tournaments had grown from 821 children the first year to over 9,000 students competing.
The events use the free Swiss tournament management software (created by Chess Kids) from www.swisstournament.com.
Chess Kids New Zealand was started in late 2009 to replicate the business model.