About ten minutes from Oslo’s principal railway station, The Good Knight calls itself the world’s first chess pub. On Monday, while the Norway Chess Open tournament was under way, the place was busy with 40 tables inside, chess books on the shelves and beer dispensers shaped like a knight and a rook.
The pub’s links to Magnus Carlsen run deeper than the name on the wall. He learned about the opening and turned up for the private launch in 2018, four days before his defence of the world title against Fabiano Caruana. He still drops in now and then, and when he does, he takes part in trivia night every other Thursday.
Co-owner Kristoffer Gressli, a former employee of the Norwegian Chess Federation and a recognised FIDE Arbiter with a rating in the 1800s, said the venue was built out of a simple chess obsession that grew into a business. “When I quit my job, I just knew I wanted to do something around chess,” he said. The first idea was to sell training classes, books and chess sets with his partner, Torbjorn Ringdal Hansen, who was Carlsen’s first coach. A friend pushed them toward a pub because it could stay open for at least 16 hours, instead of the eight to 10 hours they had in mind for a shop. Five months later, they opened.
The Good Knight has room for 100 players and can hold 220 people at its peak. During Monday’s visit, the walls were covered with chess motifs and photographs of world champions across eras, from Jose Raul Capablanca and Viswanathan Anand to Garry Kasparov and Carlsen. Gressli said the business was not built for a one-off novelty. “We kind of knew that it worked at a small scale, but we were eager to see if it would work on this large scale,” he said. “We have room for 100 players here. It actually works, so that’s quite fun to see.”
That larger test matters because Norway’s chess boom had already been building since Carlsen’s first world title in 2013, and The Good Knight arrived at exactly the right moment to feed it. Gressli said the city already had plenty of themed bars, including arcade and bowling venues, but chess had its own rhythm. “After a few beers, Norwegians suddenly aren’t as introverted,” he said. “There are no awkward silences.” He described the mood when Carlsen wins as far from restrained: “Just people celebrating a goal in football. That’s how it was like when Carlsen won.”
On trivia nights, Carlsen is not just a guest name on the door. “Every other Thursday, we do have a trivia night and Carlsen, when he’s here, takes part,” Gressli said. “He usually wins that as well.” For a pub that began as a chess idea and became a social space, that may be the clearest sign that the gamble paid off. In Oslo, The Good Knight is no longer a curiosity attached to a champion; it is part of the city’s chess culture, and it is still drawing a crowd.
