The Legacy of Chess in NYC

I don't play chess.

To paraphrase Dr. Strangelove, I have neither the time nor the inclination for the strategic thought the game requires. Much like driving a truck, I have great admiration but not the skills to do it. Barring a late in life conversion to the game, I'll never get into the game of chess.

And yet, oddly enough, yours truly has written two blog posts about the game -- one in 2008 and another in 2021 -- and both are two of my favorite posts ever.

The 2008 post was about a bunch of NYC kids who won several national championships down in Florida. I was flattered enough to get a thankful comment from one of the championship chess coachs.

The 2021 post was an admittedly snarky look back at the musical Chess that had a short, infamous life on Broadway. 

But the legeacy of chess in NYC runs much deeper.

Never mind that Bobby Fischer, probably the greatest American chess player in history, grew up in Brooklyn (he wasn't born in NYC but moved to the city at age six) and trained here. All over the city you can walk in public parks and see people playing it on cement tables built for the game. There are chess clubs in public schools all over the city, with students winning (as previously indicated) at championships all over the country and world.

And then there's the Marshall Chess Club in Greenwich Village.

It's over 100 years old and is as New York an institution as has ever existed. The club has members who have been playing there since there were children and are now quite elderly. It has had some famous members over the decades too, including Dada/Cubist French artist Marcel Duchamp, a young boy named Stanley Kubrick who would gone on to direct classic films (including the aforementioned Dr. Strangelove), and, more recently, radio legend Howard Stern. 

More amazingly, it has survived COVID and keeps going. This has been in part because of the popularity of last year's The Queen's Gambit on Netflix but chess is one of those games who popularity is perennial, whose practioners are devoted, no matter if the game has moments of fadishness.

The players at the Marshall Chess Club are the hardcore devotees who keep the game going no matter what -- and keep its proud legacy in NYC alive.