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Sydney Morning Herald

The chess world is changing. Meet the check mates making all the right moves

Growing up in Kenya, Maleik Njoroge played chess casually in primary school. But it wasn't until he stumbled upon a chess set in a Melbourne op shop that his love for the game swung into full force. The set he found reminded him of those from his childhood, and he carted it around for a year before eventually teaching his best friend to play. (As Njoroge puts it: 'I had the first problem chess players face: I had no one to play with.') To Njoroge's surprise, it deepened their friendship. As he began to play chess with more friends, he noticed the same effect: chess was a conduit for richer connections. So Njoroge started Migrant Chess Club – a community in which to share his love of the game. From New York to London, chess clubs globally are on the rise, attracting avid social players and inhabiting spaces not traditionally associated with chess, such as art galleries and bars. '[It's] the intentionality of spending an hour or two, no distractions, no phones, just in each other's company and seeing each other's wins and losses in all this chaos,' he says. 'In the background of that is this silence and almost meditative space ... you have richer conversations, I'd say, as opposed to going to a bar and just drinking. I found this was an avenue that I hadn't had to connect with him before.' In popular culture, from Anya Taylor Joy's The Queen's Gambit to Sally Rooney's buzzy 2024 novel Intermezzo and the M3GAN Chess bot, the centuries-old game has been making a bit of a comeback.