How hit TV show turned lockdown hobby into new business venture
There's been a huge boom in the classic game’s popularity all over the world recently, with Northern Ireland being no exception.
Meet Tamas Kosik, who turned a lockdown hobby into a new business venture after being inspired by a hit TV drama.
Tamas, 36 and from Newtownabbey, owns a small business called Chess Junction Belfast. It initially started during lockdown as a hobby, which saw him collecting and making chess sets.
It was all thanks to The Queen's Gambit, which became a smash hit on Netflix during the Covid pandemic. Chess was thriving at the time following the success of the streaming service miniseries.
The Netflix series starring Anya Taylor-Joy as chess prodigy Beth Harmon captivated millions of viewers and spurred a huge boom in the classic game’s popularity, with Northern Ireland being no exception.
"The show was a big boost for the chess community because people actually started to go to chess clubs and play online on chess.com. People had forgotten how amazing the game is," Tamas told Belfast Live.
"It's a really old traditional game that is believed to have originated in India and it makes your brain work so hard and develops your memory and strategy skills.
"When you think back to the old days whenever Christmas wasn't about telly, it was about people sitting around the tree and playing board games and chess was one of the most popular ones."
It was love that brought Tamas to Belfast from his native Hungary 15 years ago and like many during lockdown, he picked up a new hobby when he started to collect chess sets.
But for Tamas, who also works in hospitality, collecting them wasn't enough and he researched different ways to create his own chess sets.
He said: "Growing up, I always loved playing chess and it was something I cherished but somehow it was forgotten and overtaken by other things in life. Like many people during lockdown I watched The Queen's Gambit and it made me want to own a chess set again.
"I realised that I loved the different figurines and just fell in love with them immediately so I started to grow my own collection through online auctions."
Fast-forward five years and today Tamas boasts the biggest collection of unique chess sets in Northern Ireland with hundreds to his name.
He added: "At the moment I have over 400 extremely rare chess sets from all over the world. I have some really unique ones that are not manufactured anymore - some are 100 years old, Franklin Mint chess sets and others from all over the world like Kenya, France, Italy."
When collecting them wasn't enough, Tamas started looking into how to make his own chess sets to pass the time by watching YouTube videos and doing lots of practice.
"It can take around two days to produce chess sets due to drying times for the paint and glue etc. It went so far that I started to profit from it and created my own business, Chess Junction Belfast - reselling the chess sets I have bought at auction as well as selling those I have produced myself.
"Sales have really taken off especially at Christmas time. I post everywhere and get enquiries from Canada, Australia, Germany etc. It's quite an addiction, to be honest, but they are my babies. I love the figurines and the craftsmanship put into it. There are various hobbies in the world but to have one that's profitable means it's not a bad hobby," Tamas said.
He also wants to encourage more people to take up the game of chess and has already got his young son interested as he explained: "I've got a baby son aged two and a half so I'm teaching him how to play chess. He's really intrigued by all of the chess pieces.
"Every time I open a chess set or make a chess set, he's by my side, keen to learn and eager to know the pieces. He can even name the pieces already so it's a very good start and hopefully in the next few years he can help me out with this.
"From the research I've done I think I'm probably the biggest chess collector in Ireland and Northern Ireland because I got in touch with chess clubs and other chess collectors locally and definitely I'm the only one who's doing this. I'd still like to expand and do more, I'd like to be bigger.
"I've also started to get in touch with schools as well, offering them some chess sets and In the future, it would be nice to organize chess clubs and tournaments, chess camps in the summer, so I've a whole range of projects ahead of me."
You can find out more by following Chess Junction Belfast on Facebook.
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