From Getting Kicked Out of a Café to Starting a Chess Club in One Year

Hello everyone! I’d like to share a story that might resonate with many of you. Like a lot of chess enthusiasts, I picked up the game during the pandemic—watching streams, studying tactics, and laughing at GothamChess videos online. But I never expected that this new hobby would eventually lead me to co-found a local chess club in Hamburg.

After moving to a big city in Germany for work, I was looking for ways to meet new people and stumbled across a local chess meetup. That’s where it all began.
The group held weekly meetings and usually had a bunch of people signed up to attend. My first event took place at an unfamiliar café somewhere in Hamburg. I soon realized that most people who signed up didn’t actually show up—and even the organizer was missing! (In fact, I’ve never seen the organizer since joining the group.) It ended up just being me and one other guy, who luckily had brought a chess board with him. At least I knew I was in the right place.

We started playing some games, with some small talk in between. He was clearly much stronger than me—I gave a decent fight in the first game but didn’t really stand a chance. Later I found out his online rating was around 1800, compared to my 1100 or so. That made me feel pretty good about holding my own, and it gave me my first real motivation to keep playing OTB. We exchanged contacts and agreed to come back the next week.

One week later, same café, same guy—again, just the two of us at first. But then something changed. People started arriving one after another, pulling out boards, chatting, and eventually we’d taken over half the café—about 20 people or so. That’s when the shouting began.

A man behind me started yelling, clearly upset that we were playing chess in his café. He demanded to know who was organizing this meetup. None of us were. We tried to explain that we were just playing chess, buying drinks and snacks, and not causing any trouble. But he wasn’t having it. He argued that we were making him lose money and insisted that we should play chess at a sports club, not a café. Turns out he was the owner—and he was angry. So we had to leave.

That night, we made a WhatsApp group and agreed to find a new spot for next week. It was early March and still too cold to play outside, so we needed an indoor option.

We found another café with a more relaxed owner and started meeting there. We also posted updates in the Meetup group, letting people know we’d moved—and that the original organizer had gone MIA. We slowly took the organization into our own hands. New players kept joining, and when the weather got warmer, we moved to the park. We played on stairs, rocks, wherever we could sit and set up a board.

We even created a community on Chess.com and tried organizing some online tournaments—though turnout was nothing like our OTB meetups.

Most of us were adults who had mainly played online before, and even complete beginners felt at home in our group. The atmosphere was super friendly and relaxed. But after a while, we started getting more ambitious. We wanted to try playing in real tournaments.

In Germany—and especially in Hamburg—there are lots of chess tournaments, but most require club membership to participate. The exception is often speed chess tournaments, which are open to everyone. In May 2024, three of us joined one of those. We got paired against some pretty strong players in the early rounds—including high-rated kids—and it was a humbling experience. I even thought about buying Kill the KID afterward. Still, we scored a few wins and got a sense of where we stood in the grand scheme of German OTB chess, at least in rapid formats.

Throughout 2024, we took part in a few more rapid tournaments and even picked up some awards for best “unrated” players.

Then fall came, and it was time to find another indoor location. The old café we’d used was too small for our growing group. Around the same time, the organizer of one of the smaller tournaments we’d played in got in touch. He mentioned they were starting a Friday evening chess night at a new café—and that they had just opened a chess department at their club and were looking for players to join their league team.

Suddenly, we had the chance to play classical chess in a real league starting next year. It was an easy decision. Our little group of online hobby players became the new team for their club.

Germany’s chess league system works a lot like football. At the top is the Bundesliga (yes, the same league where Magnus Carlsen played in Hamburg this year!), and at the bottom are local leagues like Kreisklasse and Kreisliga—think 9th tier or lower in football terms. That’s where we entered for the 2025 season: a brand-new team, with a full roster of unrated players.

Surrounded by teams and players who’ve been doing this for years, we definitely stood out. But we’ve done pretty well: 2 wins, 1 draw, and 1 loss so far. Tonight, we’re playing our final game of the season—and if we win, we’ll secure second place and earn promotion to a higher division next year! (See league table below—our team is Stadtpark Barrio 96.)

Here’s also a beautiful league win by one of our strongest players (that one guy I met on my first meetup) against an 1800-rated veteran (who, by the way, is 82 years old).

If you’re curious about the German chess league system, or want to hear more stories and see games from our team, let me know—I might even try doing a video format.

You can also follow us on our new Instagram account, and I’ll keep posting blogs if people are interested!

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15.04.25 UPDATE! We won our final match and got promoted from the 2nd place!