Success in sport is one of those things.

Whoever is the best can look forward to promotion to the higher league and is rewarded with stronger competition.

Like Rudolf Benninger.

The chairman of the Heusenstamm chess club led the first team to success.

With a half point lead she won first place in the second division south.

Heusenstamm is the only Hessian club that will play in the first division in the coming season.

Or, to put it more cautiously, could play.

Because Benninger says: "I have two problems."

Kim Maurus

Volunteer.

  • Follow I follow

Actually everything could be good.

The rise is the result of a remarkable performance, seven years ago Heusenstamm had played in the Hessen League.

This was followed by promotion to the top division, then to the second division south.

The Heusenstammers finished third in the 2018/2019 season, before the outbreak of the pandemic.

In autumn 2019, the team started the season with the aim of advancing.

“The players were motivated to the point of their hair,” says Benninger.

But in spring 2020 the season was interrupted for one and a half years due to the pandemic.

It was not until August 2021, almost two years after the start of the season, that the Heusenstammers were able to hold the final three rounds.

And now after the climb?

Benninger sighs.

This afternoon he is in the game room in Heusenstamm.

Half a dozen young people are now active where no one pushed figures over the boards for a year and a half.

Stefan Solonar, who bears the title of "International Master", trains them twice a week and helped the first team to promotion himself as a substitute.

It doesn't work without new sponsors

"The team that has now made it up, a core of six or seven people, has already signaled to me that they can't necessarily be on all Bundesliga match dates," says Benninger. Chess is an international sport, and many of its players come from Poland or the Czech Republic. "Because the competition will be tougher, I have to recruit real top people." He still needs two regular players for the season that is due to start next year. He has some in sight, but: "Everything has to do with whether I can get the finances together."

Finances are Benninger's second problem.

Moving up to the top division means traveling to games all over Germany.

Arrivals, hotels and entry fees must be paid.

“Some of the people who come are full professionals.

They live from chess, of course I have to pay them something, ”he says.

Without new, larger sponsors, the club could not participate in the first division.

And he has not yet made any firm commitments.

In any case, the pandemic is making Benninger's business difficult.

In one of the past three rounds of the past season, all of the team's corona tests had to be available in German and printed out - with an international team, that's not always easy.

In addition, proper training was not possible in the long break in the game.

“There was no real real-time chess.” The players could only switch to the internet.

Hope for good corona numbers

The future league games cannot be held in their own game room, they have to move to larger rooms due to the pandemic.

Hans-Dieter Post is also in the game room on that day to bring a young player over.

The organizer of various chess tournaments in the region is not a member of the club, he describes himself as a fan of the club: "I would never have thought that Heusenstamm would ever play in the first Bundesliga," he says.

In this league you need “a certain degree of hardship with yourself”, and nobody can afford to miss appointments.

It remains to be seen whether the games in the Bundesliga will work.

Together with Benninger, Post hopes that at least the Heusenstamm Open can take place this autumn, it would be the first major tournament in Heusenstamm since the beginning of the pandemic.

Last year it had to be canceled, before that around 500 international participants attended the tournament.

This year it could be 200.

"Middle age is a bit missing because everyone is professionally committed," says Post.

The fact that the risk groups, i.e. younger and older players, are more represented, makes the chess event a lottery game.

The corona situation of the event could thwart the bill again.

"We depend on how the numbers develop," he says.