Few games tend to capture one’s imagination like a battle over 64 squares of chess does. From authors like Premchand and Umberto Eco to filmmakers like Satyajit Ray and Ingmar Bergman, the game has fascinated them all. Yet, in a cricket-crazy city like Mumbai, it might not be the first game that a teenager turns to.

Unknown to many, the city has had a long-running affair with the checkerboard. The heyday arrived in the 1980s when the Zandu Canteen in Parel became a hotbed for chess talent. This was followed by the Prabodhankar Thackeray Sports Complex in Vile Parle in the 1990s. Geeta Punjabi, founder of Chanakya Chess Club and head of Bandra Chess Association has been witness to the evolution since then. “Once upon a time, the game had star power. You had Aamir Khan and Sunil Dutt organising and participating in events,” she recalls. It was through these tournaments that names such as Pravin Thipsay and Sharad Tilak emerged.