Blitz Society, the new chess café in Paris loves the flash game
A few steps from Flore and Deux Magots, a café-bar dedicated to the muse Caïssa, the goddess of 64 huts, has just opened in Paris. 27 chessboards and pendulums await, as in Washington Square in New York, the followers of the fast games.
“If the weather is cold or too rainy, I take refuge at the Café de la Régence. There I have fun watching chess playing …»Since Diderot and his famous Rameau’s nephew, sur knows that Paris and chess have written a common history. Fascinated by the universe of 64 boxes, reinvigorated by the formidable series The Lady’s Game, four followers of Caïssa have just opened in the capital Blitz Society, a chess café-bar inspired as much by the memory of the great Philidor as by the “scammers», The crazy parties that make vibrate the chess pieces of Washington Square located in Greenwich Village, the bohemian district of New York.
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Romain Benhamou, one of the founders of this new chess lair firmly believes in the virtues of this almost two-thousand-year-old game, which mixes, bewitched by sublime combinations, all generations: “There is a community of chess players who dreamed of a friendly place like this. She naturally descends from the Luxembourg Gardens and has already, in a few weeks of existence, adopted our little one “company”. But our great success is that here, as in Vienna in the 19th century or in Paris in the 20th century, passing enthusiasts also stop there to discover a warmth and an atmosphere. “
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Atmosphere, the word is well chosen since Blitz Society, this circle of reappeared blitzers, was decorated by a talented designer, Sandra Benhamou. Around a giant photograph of the great Mikhail Tal, nicknamed the magician of Riga by his peers – because his attacks were as unpredictable as they were incalculable -, the decorator was able to find the spirit of the tables of Washington Square in New York in declared to use only raw materials made of terracotta and weathered wood.
Some masters of the 64 boxes have already acquired the habit like the Rameau’s nephew to come for a walk on rue du Sabot, in the 6th arrondissement. Sophie Milliet, the reigning French champion, never forgets to pass in her “fantastic chess barWhen she stops in Paris. The great master Jean-Luc Chabanon admits bluntly that Blitz Society is an ideal place to make riders, madmen and tricks dance on the pretty encrusted platters.
In a few days the world chess championship between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniatchtchi will start. One of the main trainers of the brilliant Norwegian champion is the French maestro, Laurent Fressinet, also chief animator in his spare time of the excellent chess site. Chess24. He does not despair, if his protégé retains his title, to show him one day Blitz Society because the world champion does not hide that he loves the attractions of our capital. And perhaps then, like Bobby Fischer in his time in New York, he will come to show his gifts in this new Regency. The mad blitzers of the rue du sabot are already waiting, with undisguised alacrity, for his coming …
The Blitz Society café-bar, 4, rue du Sabot Paris VIe, open Tuesday to Sunday 11 am-11pm.
The Lady’s Game (The Queen’s Gambit ) by Scott Frank and Allan Scott inspired by Walter Tevis’ novel, with Anya Taylor-Joy