Cocktails and checkmates: the young Britons giving chess a new lease of life

The chessboards at Knight Club, at Café 1001 on Brick Lane, London, aren’t there as a gimmick: they are all occupied. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

One of the liveliest spots on a Tuesday night in east London’s Brick Lane isn’t a restaurant or a streetwear brand pop-up, it’s a chess club – or chess club-nightclub hybrid, to be exact.

Knight Club is the unlikely crossover between chess and London’s fervent nightlife scene. It was started by Yusuf Ntahilaja, 27, who began his first chess club in August 2023 at a smaller bar in Aldgate, not too far from the current location at Café 1001 on Brick Lane.