This Hungarian Hotel Lets You Face Off With A Chess Grandmaster

Hungarian chess grandmaster Judit Polgár is a living legend. Considered the world’s best female chess player and drawing comparisons to the fictional star of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at just 15 years old, breaking Bobby Fischer’s record at the time. She was also the youngest player ever to break into The International Chess Federation’s (FIDE) top 100 players list at the age of 12; and most recently, she took home the title of the best woman player in history at the FIDE 100 Awards gala, marking the centenary of the Federation.

The award ceremony took place in Budapest, a city that is synonymous with chess excellence and artistry. Polgár—who was born in Budapest—was an ideal choice for Gresham Palace’s new Chess Masterclass experience, which allows guests to come face to face with the champion in a private lesson. “Chess has a huge history in Hungary and is part of the culture,” says Polgár. “It practically goes back 200 years. And we always had an elite player recognized around the world—mostly men, but for a lot of decades, women as well.”

After the debut of The Queen’s Gambit in 2020 and the popularity of the 45th Chess Olympiad in September 2024, the timing for the partnership felt right. “Chess is very popular all over the world now,” says Polgár, who credits the Netflix show for increasing the game’s visibility. “Now, it’s seen from many different perspectives. It got closer to people and became a good tool for socializing—online and offline.”

During her one-hour masterclass, Polgár teaches chess, but the lessons go beyond the board. “A lot of business people love chess. I have friends who are very serious in business, who very much like the strategy of chess, the tactics, and the battle. They love the game, and they express how much it can help them in their work, to build up a system, to strategize, to make decisions and to use time well.”

Dating back to 1906, Gresham Palace is an icon of Budapest in its own right, sitting in a stately Art Nouveau building steps from the Danube and the Széchenyi Chain Bridge. The masterclass takes place in Gresham Palace’s elegant glass lobby atrium, in a quiet area called The Cabinet. Guests are also welcome to play chess on their own time too, with a chess board located by the concierge desks, which is a warm, welcoming area filled with books and comfortable nooks.

In the 1920s and in the golden years before World War II, Gresham Palace played host to one of the city’s most celebrated coffeehouses, the Gresham-Venezia Café, which was the informal meeting place of the so-called “Gresham Circle,” a group ofHungarian influential artists, intellectuals and various creatives, including expressionist painter Róbert Berény; modernist artist József Egry; and sculptor Pál Pátzay, whose work you can still see in the city today.

These days, the hotel is showcasing a modern Gresham circle in their campaigns and guest experiences, featuring local tastemakers and influential vanguards like Budapest-based writer Zsófia Kemény; Hungarian supermodel and actress Palvin Barbara; French-Hungarian visual artist and designer Daniel Labrosse; and of course, chess champion Polgár, “It’s a great fit,” says Polgár, “and we have long-term plans—perhaps even to have a chess club at the hotel one day.”