YORK, England — Pints in hand, a group of men bent over chessboards beneath the slanted ceiling beams of the Eagle and Child pub in York, northern England.
Among them was Maksym Kryshtafor, an 8-year-old Ukrainian boy with freckles and a mischievous smile, who navigated his pieces around the board with intense focus.
The group had moved the weekly meeting to an earlier time to allow the young guests to sleep, and he quickly impressed these chess aficionados with decades more experience.
“He’s really good for his age; there’s no doubt about that,” said Paul Townsend, 62, an avid chess player and member of the English Chess Federation. “And he clearly has a talent.”
mr. Townsend and his family hosted Maksym and his mother after the federation essentially played matchmaker and asked if they would be willing to sponsor the pair.
More than six million refugees from Ukraine have left for Europe, according to the United Nations, each with the challenges of a war-torn life: a foreign country, an unknown language, and weak ties to support systems like education and health care – if all have. ties. Finding a chase that provides focus and stability can help exiles deal with the fears and turmoil of restarting life far from home.
For Maksym it was chess.
“Chess is his whole life, and now it’s my whole life,” said Maksym’s mother, Iryna Kryshtafor. “It’s like air for him, because he’s playing all the time.”
Chess has helped Maksym deal with the complex emotions of leaving home and adjusting to life in Britain, which has not always been easy. Without a good command of English, he was placed with younger students for some of his classes at school, and it was difficult for him to connect with other children, his mother said. He misses his grandparents, who lived with them in the Ukrainian city of Odessa and who stayed behind. Mrs. Kryshtafor is estranged from Maksym’s father, who was not part of the boy’s life.
When war broke out in February, Ms Kryshtafor, 45, had made an effort to pack her and Maksym’s most essential belongings into a backpack as they fled to the border.
Countless mothers across Ukraine were focused on how to save their children while maintaining a sense of stability, and Ms. Kryshtafor was no different.
Forgetting to bring a good winter coat, she packed up the things she knew were most important to Maksym: a chess book, a laptop on which to practice his games, and the white polo shirt and red fleece he’s wearing. for every match.
They first went to Romania, where they stayed for weeks. Then Mrs. Kryshtafor to the English Chess Federation to see if anyone would receive her and Maksym so he could continue playing and go back to school.
Our coverage of the war between Russia and Ukraine
She eventually bonded with Mr Townsend and his wife, Helen, who offered them an outbuilding in their spacious home near York as part of a program that allowed British families to help Ukrainians fleeing war for six months. long to catch. So far, despite procedural difficulties, more than 65,000 people have moved from Ukraine to Britain under the program.
Maksym is enrolled in school, where he begins to make friends and enjoy mathematics, Ms. Kryshtafor said, because he can understand it even without a strong command of English.
Even with hospitable hosts like the Townsends and the safety of life away from war, Ms Kryshtafor said she had found it difficult to adapt to humble circumstances. She had spent most of her life in Odessa, and although she has two university degrees and a career as a journalist, she now works as a hotel cleaner.
“It’s not that simple,” Mrs. Kryshtafor said, describing the worries of living in someone else’s home and relying on them for her and her son’s needs.
“I’m comfortable here,” she said, “but I think all the time about what will happen in six months.”
Under UK policy, families agree to host Ukrainians for six months, and their visas are valid for up to three years. The Kryshtafors will have to find a place of their own unless the sponsors allow them to stay longer than the original agreement.
To ease the anxiety, mother and son turned to chess, a focus of much of Maksym’s young life.
He started playing at the age of 4 and showed promise early on.
Both have expressed hope that he can become a grandmaster before he turns 12, and are eager to sack the youngest person in the world to reach the prestigious rankings.
But mr. Townsend and other chess fanatics say a target is far away. Still, Maksym is clearly skilled, Mr Townsend said.
“Does that mean he will one day become a grandmaster, let alone at 12? Not necessarily,” he said.
Yet Maksym is nothing if he is not determined. He gets up at 5 a.m. every day to practice online before school and until recently had regular online training sessions with a Ukrainian chess grandmaster through the Ukrainian Chess Federation.
So far, his lucky kit and hours of training have served him well as he wins league after league in England. At the end of July, he and his mother traveled to Greece for the European Youth Chess Championship, where he won in his age group in two categories – fast and fast.
Like many former Soviet countries, Ukraine has a long tradition of strong chess grandmasters, Mr Townsend explained, but often the expectation of total dedication to the game is from a young age.
“You would see it as a place where chess is taken much more seriously than here,” Mr Townsend said. Parents put young children through rigorous training programs and school often comes second to chess.
“It’s such a huge, culturally different approach to chess,” Ms Townsend said. As a distraction from chess, she enjoyed showing Maksym how to cook, taking him on nature walks, and building with Lego pieces.
But much of Maksym’s time still goes to chess, and Mr. Townsend is eager to help him compete in local tournaments.
On a recent Saturday morning, he took Maksym and Mrs. Kryshtafor to a Quaker school in York for a competition involving 120 young people aged 7 to 18. In a gymnasium, shelves lined tables, lined with row after row of children tapping clocks and moving pieces.
Some children were so small that when they sat, their feet swung above the floor. Maksym’s sneakers barely touched him.
He fiddled a little while the organizers rattled the rules in English. He didn’t understand much of what was being said, but he knows how to play. His first game was over within a minute.
He ran into the hall where Mrs. Kryshtafor was waiting and hugged her. After the next game, Maksym walked back to his mother.
“Too easy,” he said with a smile. “I made a checkmate.”
Before the fifth game, Maksym pressed his forehead against his mother’s and she whispered some encouraging words. His opponent, an older boy, arrived just before the game started.
Maksym rested his chin on his hand and smiled until he suddenly realized he’d made a mistake. He tugged at the tufts of his hair and twisted them around his fingers. He eventually lost to the boy, and after they shook hands, he wiped the tears from his eyes.
Maksym eventually finished second in the competition. Towards the end, he seemed more interested in chatting with a group of kids who had organized a tag outside.
His long hair flew after him as one of the children chased after him.
“He’s just a kid,” his mother said, watching him frolic. “He works so hard at chess that sometimes you forget he’s just a kid.”