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A first for Philly’s Portal: Chess players faced off from thousands of miles away

“In chess, we normally start with a handshake, here you just wave,” said Igor Khmelnitsky, an international chess master.

The Vlaming and Van Voorn familes stop to watch a chess match game at the portal in City Hall Sunday, as players in Dublin, Lublin, Philadelphia, and Vilnius play each other with portals in each city serving as a digital window, allowing players to see one another while they're playing. The Vlamings are visiting from Breda, in the Netherlands. Their friends, the Van Voorns, live in Wayne. Playing are Richard Robinson (left), 17, of Northeast Philadelphia, and Chris Romeril (right), 16, of Collegeville, with the Tri Bridges Chess Club of Exton.
The Vlaming and Van Voorn familes stop to watch a chess match game at the portal in City Hall Sunday, as players in Dublin, Lublin, Philadelphia, and Vilnius play each other with portals in each city serving as a digital window, allowing players to see one another while they're playing. The Vlamings are visiting from Breda, in the Netherlands. Their friends, the Van Voorns, live in Wayne. Playing are Richard Robinson (left), 17, of Northeast Philadelphia, and Chris Romeril (right), 16, of Collegeville, with the Tri Bridges Chess Club of Exton.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

White knights and black bishops lay on the table as two pensive men intensely stared at their chessboards in the middle of City Hall’s courtyard. Their opponents? They were more than 4,400 miles away in Poland.

They faced off through the Portal, a video art installation intended to build connection and make the world feel just a little smaller.

Since the 3.5-ton circular video screen’s arrival in Philadelphia in October 2024 — in LOVE Park where it stayed until vandalism incidents prompted its relocation to the City Hall courtyard in April — passersby wave at, blow kisses to or simply stare and smile at the similarly excited and entranced standing in front of Portals in Lublin (Poland), Dublin (Ireland) and Vilnius (Lithuania).

Sunday the unique sculpture played host to a new Portal experience: the first international chess tournament on, appropriately, International Chess Day.

Players gathered in Philadelphia, Lublin, Dublin, and Vilnius to compete in five-minute chess matches.

“There is no award, just bragging rights,” said Martin Collette, senior director of operations at nonprofit After School Activities Partnerships.

Based in Philly, ASAP provides free after-school and summer programs for children and teens, including chess classes. They partnered with Portals, Chess.com, ChessUP, and Tri Bridges Chess Club in Exton to transform the city into an open-air chess arena, stopping dozens of passersby who paused to watch long-distance checkmates.

Playing chess through a portal

Waving at their Polish counterparts through the portal, King of Prussia resident Igor Khmelnitsky, 56, and Philly native Angelo DelloMargio, 29, were the first ones to sit down for a match.

“In chess, we normally start with a handshake, here you just wave,” said Khmelnitsky, an international chess master.

In front of them, two smart chessboards provided by ChessUP were connected through WiFi, sending signals to Chess.com and to the other two boards in Poland, Collette said.

Each time Khmelnitsky and DelloMargio made a move on their respective boards, their opponents’ boards in Poland lit up to tell them where a piece was placed.

To the left of each board, a digital watch reminded players they only had five minutes to do all their movements.

“It gives you a certain time pressure, so you can’t just stall out and think for a long time,” Collette said. “If your time runs out you will lose the game.”

All four players had their eyes pinned on their boards, as dozens of people gathered around Portals in Lublin and Philly, watching and waving.

”I have a problem,” Khmelnitsky exclaimed, a minute left in his match against another international chess master. “Is it one of the pawns?” Collette, of ASAP, asked him.

The interaction took seconds, 20 seconds that cost Khmelnitsky a chance at victory.

“It took me 20 seconds to figure out that it was my move and not theirs,” said Khmelnitsky, who is not used to playing on a smart board.

Still, he added with excitement: “It was fun.”

As the clock counted down the last five seconds, DelloMargio, an ASAP alum, won his match, becoming the first champion of Portal chess in Philadelphia.

In Poland, multicolor lights took over his opponent’s board announcing the defeat.

“It’s a pretty cool experience,” DelloMargio said, raising a fist. “I think my opponent was much stronger than me and I did my best to stay rational and sane throughout the game, but I managed to win on time.”

Just like that, the boards were ready for two new players, and the Portal moved to another city, Vilnius.

For once Philly wasn’t the one acting up

As the players focused on their boards, two young boys stood in the middle of the Philly portal unaware of the competition. After a quick picture, their parents promptly moved them out of the way.

“My son recognized the Lithuanian flag,” Britt Van Voorn said. “Then we realized they were playing chess. I mean how cool is that?”

The boys and Van Voorn left in time to miss a man in Vilnius taking his shirt off, putting it halfway back on, and removing it again to flex his arms at the Portal.

Laughter and confusion erupted in Philadelphia, until someone in Lithuania escorted the man away. The four players didn’t seem to notice, their eyes trained on their boards.

For DelloMargio, that is the magic of chess. “It’s a great creative outlet … it is more a form of mindfulness, because you are there at the board and you are trying to tune out everything else. It’s almost meditative in that way,” he said.

Even if that “everything else” is a shirtless guy thousands of miles away.