Greece's unsung chess heroes aim for the top in Norway

By Costas Onisenko

The Panellinion cafe on the corner of Mavromichali and Solonos streets in the central Athenian district of Exarchia is an unassuming kind of place, much like any other neighborhood watering hole that serves Greek coffee mostly to local seniors reading their newspapers and clacking their strings of beads. It doesn't have an espresso machine or music, yet it does draw a younger clientele too. Almost all of the cafe's patrons share a passion for chess. Boards are laid out on most tables and many of the regulars are players, some more experienced than others.

While other coffee shops and bars spent the first half of the summer screening World Cup matches from Brazil, talk at the Panellinion these days revolves around the 41st Chess Olympiad in Tromso, Norway, which runs through August 15.

Five men and five women are representing Greece at the international tournament, among them a teenager, Stavroula Tsolakidou, from Kavala in northern Greece, who won the world title in the girls under-14 category in the United Arab Emirates last year. Some may argue that chess, the ultimate game of logic, is not well suited to the Greek temperament, yet the success of local players tells a different story.

There are some 200 active chess clubs in Greece and around 30,000 registered players. In fact, the country ranks 25th in the world in the men's category and 28th in the women's, boasting 12 grandmasters and 17 international masters among the men, as well as three female grandmasters and six female international masters, explains Tania Karali, a member of the board of the Hellenic Chess Federation and an arbiter.

“This is what it's about. We sit high in the international rankings because of our talent and despite the fact that the...