The Classical Club brings together two things rarely found in one place: expert chess coaching and travel planned to the last detail. At the board is Grandmaster Daniel King, a GM since 1989 with a peak rating of 2560, author of more than fifteen chess books, and the mind behind the PowerPlayChess YouTube channel. Alongside him is Nathan Rose, author of Chess Opening Names and a passionate tournament player, whose YouTube channel has helped thousands of busy adults finally get better at the game. Behind the experience is Leatherback Travel, which has spent the last seven years running small-group adventures around the world. Over 480 trips and 4,400 travellers, the founder Matthew Newton is now bringing that same care to chess. Are you ready for a week in a grand European house, with twenty players who came for the chess?
Matthew Newton
CEO
Mat runs Leatherback Travel, the group behind Patch Adventures, Fencox Travel, and a handful of other brands built around unique experiences and slow travel to less-known destinations.
Travel shaped most of his life. His parents took him across most continents when he was young, and in his solo-traveller days he once booked a same-day flight on a whim, driving himself to the airport for a last-minute flight to Bali because he felt like it.
The Classical Club started with a conversation. Nathan Rose brought the idea to Mat at a business conference: a chess getaway, built around one impressive place, for a small group of players with enough time spent on chess with good company. Surprisingly, Mat had been thinking along the same lines himself, so it clicked instantly.
Leatherback Travel has spent seven years learning how to run unforgettable trips and provide experiences that stay with people. That same craft now goes into chess.
Daniel King
Grandmaster
Daniel earned his International Master title in 1982 and his Grandmaster title in 1989. He has represented England on many occasions and was a member of the team that defeated the Soviet Union at the 1990 Reykjavik Visa Chess Summit. He has triumphed in tournaments all over the world, in Europe, Asia and Australasia. He has written 17 books and writes a regular column for Chess Magazine in the UK and the German chess magazine Schach 64. He has coached many of the UK's strongest players and has students all over the world.
At The Classical Club, Daniel leads the board as Grandmaster, alongside Nathan Rose as Chess Host.
Nathan Rose
Chess Host
Nathan started out in investment banking before quitting in 2014 to travel and work online, building a life around location-independent work ever since.
Chess found him properly as an adult. Over two years of deliberate work, he pushed his own rating past 2000 in chess.com rapid and 1750 in FIDE classical, the kind of climb most adult players are told isn't possible without a childhood spent at the board. He wrote Chess Opening Names to dig into the stories behind the game's openings, and he's writing Road To 2000 now, about the improvement journey itself. On his YouTube channel he does the same thing for thousands of other busy adults, proving that you don't need to have been a prodigy to get there.
At The Classical Club, Nathan leads the board as Chess Host, running the program alongside Grandmaster Daniel King.
Val Kornev
Project Manager
Val has spent over ten years managing teams and building the workflows that keep something complicated running on time, four of those years in senior management at a global e-commerce company. He's spent the last five years living out of a suitcase traveling full-time, with dozens of trips and counting. The same discipline that keeps a project on track has kept him moving without ever losing the thread.
For The Classical Club, that means the logistics behind the chateau and the itinerary. He works things through fully before anyone else hears about them, so by the time a guest sits down at the board, the only thing they notice is the game.
He studied Servant Leadership in the US, and treats people as seriously as he treats results. What he's after, in his own words, is impact, beauty, and systems that work.
