Bjarte Leer-Helgesen is not a name that comes up often in context to Magnus Carlsen, who has worked with some of the most notable trainers in the sport starting from Norway’s first GM Simen Agdestein, world champion Garry Kasparov and his current trainer Peter-Heine Nielsen. But long before Magnus became a five-time world champion and arguably the greatest chess player in the world, there were a few coaches in Norway that got to see the boy who would be king take his first steps on the battlefield of 64 squares. Bjarte is one of them.But working with Magnus is only a part of Bjarte’s story. In Norway, he’s known as much for being a coach at Magnus’s first chess club, Baerum, as for his work as a prison chaplain and as someone who used the sport to help drug addicts.“Chess is the perfect sport for a person in jail because it takes such a long time. And time is the one thing people in prison have,” Bjarte tells The Indian Express from Kristiansand city in Norway. “I was always really interested in chess as a way of connecting with people, be it friends or people I don’t share the same belief or political views with. On the chessboard, we meet face to face as equals… I worked as a chaplain for 10 years, it’s a big part of my identity. It was not a normal church, but I worked with people struggling with their lives. Like in prison.” But working with Magnus is only a part of Bjarte’s story. In Norway, he’s known as much for being a coach at Magnus’s first chess club, Baerum, as for his work as a prison chaplain and as someone who used the sport to help drug addicts.Bjarte explains that while Norwegian prisons are much different than prisons around the world, there is always a hierarchy that exists between inmates and people employed there like prison chaplains who have the power to take away every little freedom an inmate can enjoy. That’s where chess came in, to break down that hierarchy.“One strategy to break down the barriers was to do something that I myself found fun. To play chess with someone I don’t know and talk about life. That makes it not so dangerous for many inmates,” he says. “In Norwegian prisons, many of the inmates had trouble with drugs and alcohol. Many of them thought that they are not intelligent since they dropped out of school. But suddenly with chess some of them — not all — would be sitting there telling themselves that there was something they understood even in this intellectual game. And it helped them boost their self esteem. For some of them, chess became the first step away from crime and drugs.”He points out how he would hold chess sessions at Kristiansand prison with inmates in their cells which would get them to open up to him. Soon, he started seeing inmates play against each other. While he does not work at the prison anymore, he beams with pride as he mentions how there are a few inmates who used chess to turn around their lives and find friends away from habits like drugs and alcohol. While he worked for six years at Kristiansand, where he played chess every week with prisoners, he also held chess sessions for other local prisons in the south of Norway later on. During the same time, Bjarte also helped people struggling with drugs and alcohol in Kirkens Bymisjon, a Christian organization focusing on social work in Norway.“We had this joke that they shouldn’t tell my chief that I only play chess in prison. Of course, that wasn’t true,” he laughs.Story continues below this adBjarte, who became an IM in his mid-20s, says he was teaching chess at multiple clubs in Oslo as a way to make money back in the day when his paths crossed with a young Magnus. He knew Henrik from the chess circuit in Norway and he would bring his kids, Ellen and Magnus, to the club. Bjarte saw first-hand how fast the eight-year-old Magnus grew, his growth multiplying over weeks rather than growing incrementally across months like other players.“I once beat him in a simul (a simultaneous game against multiple players) with 10 or 15 kids,” Bjarte tells The Indian Express with unmistakable pride in his voice. “Magnus wasn’t that good from the start. But just one year later, when we faced off, we were playing like equals in blitz. I must add that I once won the Norwegian championship in blitz, so I was quite good. One month I was thinking ‘this is one smart, clever kid’. And then the next month, I was like ‘wow, what is this?’ His piece coordination was so harmonic! I didn’t teach Magnus very much, but the things that I taught him, I only had to say once. I didn’t have to repeat.”Bjarte adds that one of those wow moments about Magnus came when he showed the yet-to-be-a-teenage Magnus a game and he just remembered all of it. To the point that he asked a question about a variation in that game a few months later.“I had of course forgotten about the game. That’s not normal for all chess kids!”Story continues below this adMagnus was rising so fast, in fact, that the club coaches chose to give him and another player additional training sessions after regular ones.“Magnus was really, really talented. But nobody in Norway was expecting a world star,” he shrugs.(The writer is in Norway at the invitation of Norway Chess. Norway Chess matches are live on SonyLiv)