To build a place for chess where people feel at home.
I spent eight years as a monk. Then came a marriage, a betrayal, homelessness, and starting over — more than once. I moved back to California because my kids needed me, even when it cost me everything I'd rebuilt. I subbed. I ground. I ran chess tournaments in empty rooms.
I'm now teaching coding at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana. And I'm building this.
Two years of running club chess tournaments taught me something: the kids who showed up deserved better infrastructure than a spreadsheet and a handshake. Real ratings. Real identities. Real stakes. A place that took them seriously.
Elements of Chess isn't a product born from a gap in the market. It's born from 22 years of formation — of being emptied and refilled enough times to know what it means to build something that lasts.
The dream isn't the platform. The dream is a room — tall ceilings, long tables with boards built in, families staying for hours, strangers sitting across from each other naturally. A place where someone walks in carrying something heavy and invisible, sits down at a board, and for a few hours — puts it down.
That moment. That's the whole thing.