‘Chess is perfect in jail’: Magnus Carlsen’s childhood coach turned prison chaplain and played with inmates

Bjarte Leer-Helgesen is a chess trainer in Norway, who worked as a coach in Magnus Carlsen’s first chess club. He knews Carlsen’s father, who would bring both his kids to the club. According to Bjarte, he saw first-hand how good Carlsen was as a eight-year old, and how he grew as a player, growing over weeks, rather than across months.

According to Indian Express, Bjarte also worked as a prison chaplain and played chess with inmates. He said, “Chess is the perfect sport for a person in jail because it takes such a long time. And time is the one thing people in prison have.”

“I was always really interested in chess as a way of connecting with people, be it friends or people I don’t share the same belief or political views with. On the chessboard, we meet face to face as equals… I worked as a chaplain for 10 years, it’s a big part of my identity. It was not a normal church, but I worked with people struggling with their lives. Like in prison,” he added.

Explaining why he decided to play chess in Norwegian prisons, he said, “One strategy to break down the barriers was to do something that I myself found fun. To play chess with someone I don’t know and talk about life. That makes it not so dangerous for many inmates.”

“In Norwegian prisons, many of the inmates had trouble with drugs and alcohol. Many of them thought that they are not intelligent since they dropped out of school. But suddenly with chess some of them — not all — would be sitting there telling themselves that there was something they understood even in this intellectual game. And it helped them boost their self esteem. For some of them, chess became the first step away from crime and drugs.”

He also revealed that he would hold chess sessions in Kristiansand prison with inmates in their cells. He also started seeing inmates play among each other. He worked for six years at Kristiansand, where played chess every week with prisoners.