Chicago, City of Chess

You could easily have concluded that Chicago was the chess capital of the world today, if you did as I did and took to the streets on this glorious late-July Sunday. First I visited the chess pavilion at North Avenue and the lakefront, where about ten games were in progress at all times throughout the afternoon. FM Aleksandar Stamnov and another gent were playing some kind of game that involved playing cards and chess pieces. I didn't understand it. Chess expert and pavilion mainstay Ron Washington, who usually cruises easily to victory there against unsuspecting patzers and tourists, had his hands full playing a series of three-minute blitz games against a young man who was every bit his equal.

After that it was off to Cecil Locke's chess tables in front of the Art Institute, which were rife with activity as usual. I played a boy named Alexander from Newberry Academy. Though I had a material advantage he lured me into stalemate and the game ended in a draw. He was a solid player, though he's not in a chess club because he says there's none at his school. All this talent shouldn't go to waste. Anybody at Newberry up for starting a chess club?

Lawyers Ousted by Chess

In a development that must be unprecedented in the history of civilization, a law office in DeLand, Florida, is being razed to make way for—are you ready for this?—chess.

It’s true. I’ll pause for a moment so you can read that first incongruous, counter-intuitive sentence again and allow it to sink in. Apparently, the powerful and unscrupulous chess lobby in DeLand has thrown its full weight behind a plan to displace a poor, defenseless group of attorneys. It all sounds very Dickensian, doesn’t it? Money quote from the DeLand-Deltona Beacon:

“To make way for the controversial new Chess Park in Downtown DeLand, a former law office on the east side of the Volusia County Historic Courthouse is being demolished.”

Okay, so in truth it’s actually a former law office, presumably vacant, and no flesh-and-blood ambulance chasers are being tossed cruelly and unceremoniously onto the snowy streets of Florida. What a relief! But, really, people, they’re building a park for chess. Can you believe it? It makes me jealous. Here in Chicago, we spend half a billion dollars for Millennium Park and not a single chess table in the place. Then, Mr. Locke, who obligingly provides the unmet need, gets chased down the boulevard.

But I digress. The Beacon article doesn’t say why the park is “controversial,” though based on a report last year from Boylston, it appears the elders of the town are worried about people betting on chess. Chess and gambling? Has that ever happened? In any case, it’s reassuring to see that they’ll have security cameras in the park. A chess park is a natrual breeding ground for terrorist activity—a veritable threat to national security—and I’d shudder to think that people might be allowed to play blitz without Big Brother keeping an eye on things.

End of rant. I guess this post exhausts my sarcasm quota for the month. Apologies in advance to my many lawyer-friends.

Chess on the Boulevard

For the second time this summer The Chicago Reader has published a substantial article on the local chess scene. First it was Ted Cox’s excellent piece on the North Avenue Chess Pavilion, and now, in this week’s issue, Gus Garcia-Roberts trains his spotlight on Cecil Locke, proprietor of the portable “Touch & Go” chess tables on Michigan Avenue.

You may have seen Mr. Locke and his rickety tables at the corner of Monroe and Michigan, though not lately because, as the article reports, the City Council “clamped down” on street performers in that area last winter. Mr. Locke and his chess tables have been exiled to the southeast corner of Michigan and Jackson, where they can be found today. Fortunately, he says, business is good in the new location.

As one who has played on Mr. Locke’s boards many times, I think what he has done is simply ingenious. It’s hard to get people to go out of their way for chess, but bring it to them—set it up anywhere there’s a crowd—and you’ll always find a few who will step up and play strangers. It never fails. Mr. Locke's enterprise trades brilliantly on that recently coined aphorism, “Chess is like ginger ale. No one thinks about bringing it, but people love it when someone remembers it.” (Hat tip: Boylston)

You’ll find players of all strengths at Touch and Go. Here’s an exciting game in which an unknown opponent played Life Master Len Weber to a draw with the Queen’s Gambit Accepted:



“Good old fashioned street chess,” Len called it. “The game is flawed, gritty, like Chicago itself.” The game was originally published in the Illinois Chess Bulletin. To get the newsletter, with many other annotated games by local masters as well as chess news from Chicago and around the state, join the Illinois Chess Association.

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