Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Edgar Talayko. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Edgar, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Back in 2018 during the Carlsen vs. Caruana FIDE World Chess Championship match, it suddenly dawned on me how few chess groups and events there are in the Milwaukee Area, despite its large population. Almost immediately after this realization, I began to conjure up what would end up becoming Milwaukee Chess: a vision of one day running a club hosting in-person chess tournaments.

I especially felt it was important to involve speed chess since generally faster time formats are the most popular to play. While at the time I was incredibly eager to start working towards bringing the organization to life, I decided to shelve that dream in favor of working on my own chess development first. However, following the pandemic and amid a myriad of other personal struggles, I decided it was finally time to bring that dream to fruition, and so I began my first meetup: Chess at The Park, an outdoor chess meet-up for all ages and experience levels, in May 2022.

For the most part, with about one million residents in the Milwaukee Area, I believe there’s strong potential for the growth of chess. Especially with being in such close proximity to Chicago, the scarcity of organized groups is what led me to look to cater to the largely untapped audience of the average adult player.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Edgar Talayko, I was born near Chicago and began playing chess competitively back in high school, when I was fourteen years old. Since then, I’ve been playing and competing constantly, as well as teaching the game for almost ten years. Thinking about it now, it’s hard to believe it’s been that long! I moved to Milwaukee several years ago and started going to the local clubs like The Southwest Chess Club and The Waukesha Chess Club and managed to reach a USCF rating over 2000, which is considered expert level in the chess community.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Advertising on social media regularly is essential, especially taking photos of attendees! You have to show people that it’s a welcoming, casual, and fun environment so they feel less pressure when attending. Also, I think it’s important to be as social and as inviting as possible. I’ve had countless on-lookers at my meetup groups who were too intimidated to play, thinking that everyone who was attending was a chess super-genius or professional player when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Chess was originally meant to be a fun, social game after all!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I initially started towards my goal of bringing a wider chess scene throughout Milwaukee, it felt like an uphill battle. I knew that the demand was there, but finding where to start or what the next steps should be was incredibly challenging. Like the start of any new endeavor, it was also difficult to put all the time and effort into advertising, growing, even the little things like designing posters. When it first started there was little to no reception and it felt like the work was being done for nothing. But I was determined to make this dream a reality, and kept pushing and being consistent with hosting events even with small attendance numbers, and it was well worth it. Now, I run three different meetup groups with around 1500 members total, and growing every day!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @MilwaukeeChess
• Facebook: Milwaukee Chess