In time the jailer became interested in the count's maneuvers on the checkered field, and the two played together. The jailer ultimately taught the game to others, and it won a popularity which it has never lost in Ströhbeck. To quote the Penny Magazine:
Young and old, men and women, boys, girls, and almost infants in arms play chess with a keenness and assiduity that is something more than remarkable. Tiny tots learn the moves upon the chess-boards and are taught the intricacies of the game just as much as a matter of course as they are taught their A B C, and some of them can play a game of chess well enough to beat many an ordinary exponent of the game before they can read.
Chess is taught in the schools, to which the pupils carry chess-boards as the English school-child would carry his satchel of books; and the pupils take a much deeper interest in their chess lessons than any schoolboy in this country has ever been known to take in any subject that was taught him.
But it is not merely in school that chess is played in Ströhbeck. Visit any local shop, and the shopman will lay aside his chess-board in order to attend to your wants and pick it up again the moment these are satisfied, to renew his attentions to some problem or continue an exciting game with his assistant. Even at the public-houses and places of refreshment chess-boards and chess-men are provided, and these are used by all and sundry.
Every home has its chess-board at which Darby and Joan while away the winter evenings before the fire, or place it upon a table in the garden in summer-time. In fact, chess is familiar to every inhabitant from the time they leave the cradle. Every one talks chess and thinks chess.
Chess-boards are everywhere. You may rest your elbow on one while you sip your beer at an old-fashioned inn, which is itself called "The Chess-Board," and there, if your quiet and subdued manner makes you appear worthy of the honor, the landlord will show you the set of chess-men presented to the inhabitants in 1650.
Two princes played upon this board, and with these very chess-men, he will tell you, and an inscription on the chess-board itself confirms all the town's privileges, so that one may say the very charter of the town is engrossed upon a chess-board.
Every year a great chess tournament is held, for which every one may enter. A large number of heats must first be played off, the winners of which are entitled to enter for the tournament. The competitors seek the distinction which will be conferred upon them if they are adjudged the winner, and do not set so much value on the prize itself, which invariably takes the shape of a magnificent chess-board, upon which are inscribed the words: "A reward for application." This is presented by the municipality.
Chess enthusiasts in the United States have urged that the game be introduced into the public schools. Certainly it does afford an excellent mental discipline, though whether useful languages and sciences should be discarded in its favor may well be questioned.