Online, on Zoom, Monday to Thursday evenings and twice on Sundays. Small groups, grouped by level. A student can attend as many sessions in a week as they like.

In person on Saturday mornings in Houston, in three levels, from a half-hour beginner class to an advanced hour.

Private lessons, one to one, by arrangement. Lesson notes and a shared study follow every session.

To ask about a class or a time, write to jeffreyashton@gmail.com, or see pandachessacademy.com for the current schedule.

The first Zoom class was on Thursday, March 19, 2020, the week the schools closed. By the following Monday there had been ten. The classes never stopped.

Since then, something like eighteen hundred online sessions: group classes most evenings of the week, Sunday classes, summer camps, and private lessons in between.

• 2020about 320, from March 19
• 2021about 250
• 2022about 250
• 2023about 250
• 2024about 250
• 2025about 275
• 2026about 215, so far

Estimates, built from the class schedule each semester, the Zoom meeting history, and the recording notices in the inbox. Breaks are left out. Private lessons are only partly counted, so the true number is a little higher.

National Master, US Chess. Regular rating 2267.

Tournament director for 951 rated events with 22,505 player entries, from 2008 to today, all under Panda Chess Academy.

University of Texas at Dallas on a full chess scholarship. Pan-American Intercollegiate champions as a freshman, the first Final Four of College Chess as a sophomore. B.S. in Psychology, magna cum laude, 2003.

Played his first rated game in 1991, in Michigan: 207 rated events over the eighteen years that followed.

Writes for ChessBase.