beersheva, israel |  Here’s a surprise gambit: The city with the most chess grand masters per capita in the world is Beersheva.

Better known as a biblical oasis or, in its later reincarnation, a desert backwater, Beersheva is trading its image of squalid housing projects for castles and kings.

“For every 20,000 inhabitants, we have a grand master,” said Beersheva chess club founder Eliyahu Levant, referring to the eight members of his club who have achieved chess’ highest ranking.

Actually it’s a ratio of one grand master per 22,875 residents in this city of 183,000. That’s still impressive compared to traditional chess centers in Russia, like Moscow with one grand master out of every 170,000 people, or St. Petersburg with one per 215,000, according to Russian Chess Federation figures.

There are only 1,000 or so grand masters worldwide, said Almog Burstein, the Israeli World Chess Federation representative.

Beersheva has become a leading team in European club competition, said Vitali Golod, 33, one of the club’s grand masters. Golod said the club’s reputation attracted top players to the city. “Beersheva has a culture of chess,” he said.

But it was not always so.

By all accounts, it is Levant, 76, who is responsible for chess taking root in these arid surroundings.

A former Soviet chess official and coach of the Leningrad Spartak chess club, Levant was one of about 140,000 Soviet Jews allowed to emigrate in the early 1970s during a brief thaw in Kremlin policy, which otherwise barred Jews from leaving.

Arriving in Israel in 1973, Levant surprised Israel’s chess community by turning down a position at the Tel Aviv chess club and announcing he was going to Beersheva.

What the chess officials did not know was that back in the Soviet Union, Levant was captivated by David Ben-Gurion’s vision to turn sleepy Beersheva into the capital of the Negev desert.

“I thought, in chess this is a place where I can start from zero,” Levant said.

Levant traveled around the city schools, playing simultaneous games against dozens at a time. In his first year he played against more than 2,000 students, he said, inviting those with potential to join the fledgling club.

In its early years, the chess club shared a small room with the local symphony orchestra, the ballet school and theater.

Now, in recognition of the club’s achievements, the city is renovating the current clubhouse, adding a second story.

“This is where we will have our competitions,” Levant said, pointing up past the walls crammed with showcases housing the dozens of trophies the club has won. The few open spaces on the walls are filled with black-and-white pictures of brooding former Israeli chess champions.

Under Levant’s tutelage, Beersheva has grown into the dominant force in Israeli chess, winning the national club championships 17 times since 1974. In doing so, Levant has also helped boost Israeli chess to a ranking of sixth in the world — behind Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, France and the United States — with four players in the top 100, according to the World Chess Federation.

One of them, Boris Avrukh, 26, ranked 92nd, is a member of the Beersheva club.

While some of the grand masters are native Israelis, not all the talent is homegrown. Beersheva and Israeli chess received a huge boost with the fall of the Soviet Union, when more than 1 million people immigrated in the 1990s from the traditional chess powerhouse.

Many of the immigrants who played chess back home were drawn to Beersheva by the reputation of Levant, which spread through the chess world. “Beersheva is a well-known name,” said Michael Klenburg, 27, who came to Israel in 1994 from the Ukraine and settled in Beersheva, where he plays competitively and teaches.

Klenburg says the club’s success is all owed to Levant. “He was the right man at the right time,” he said.