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Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

249 points by gautamcgoel 5y ago

pmoriarty 5y ago
I used to play a lot of chess, and it totally took over my life. So I never play it anymore, because for me it's too addictive. For some people (like some of these hustlers and others who can make a living from it) that's ok, but for me I wanted more from life than just playing chess all the time and thinking about nothing but chess.. but for certain types of people it has a way of sucking you in and can be a way of avoiding life. However, there were plenty of positive things I learned from chess, like thinking ahead, being able to concentrate in distracting environments, and having lots of patience.
- mi100hael 5y ago
  I've noticed that the #1 positive thing I learned from chess is rarely mentioned by others, and I'm not sure why that is. For me it was: Pattern recognition. I many cases (at least at the intermediate level), winning/losing games doesn't come down to who can "think three moves ahead," it comes down to whether someone can recognize that a pattern of three moves will result in a particular outcome. It may be a nuance, but it's actually an important one because it eliminates the notion that someone has to be of above-average intelligence and discover new moves on the fly to succeed. In actuality, that skill of pattern recognition can be practiced, honed, and applied in numerous areas of life. Playing chess is such a pure form of the skill that it opened my eyes to how many other activities can benefit from a similar approach.
  - curiousllama 5y ago
    Definitely agree. It’s not even super purposeful recognition. It’s a feeling like “this seems bad”, and looking for why, only to figure out your opponent’s likely plan. It’s much better to be less intelligent and have that feeling, than be more intelligent and not even know to look for the danger.
  - riotnrrd 5y ago
    That's a well-known aspect of "expert" level chess player thinking! There's a famous experiment that demonstrated this. Researchers briefly showed set-up chess boards to novices (little to no chess experience) and expert players (2000+ ELO) and then asked the players to recreate the board they just saw. If the set-up was from a real game (not necessarily a famous or studied game) experts performed far, far better. However, if the chess board was just a random scramble of pieces, novices and experts had the same recall ability. Essentially, expert players saw the patterns at work in legitimate mid-game set-ups and this helped the recall task.
    - prmph 5y ago
      Yes this is an interesting result that I recall from my days when I was into chess. But this result speaks to something more general that is interesting as well. It seems high levels of skill in many other fields is associated with incredible ability to recall details about a performance in that field. If I recall correctly, Bobby Fischer was able to perfectly recall positions (and his analysis of them) from games he had played years ago (and consider how many games a professional chess player might play in a career). The question I have is, what exactly is the connection? Is this association essential? And is it the incredible memory that leads to high skill, or the it's the reverse?
- paulcole 5y ago
  Same for me but with Scrabble. Saw the same thing in that scene. I don’t necessarily want more from life, but I didn’t want to be obsessed with Scrabble any longer.
  - jamiek88 5y ago
    And it’s just 100% memorization. The French champion doesn’t even speak French for example.
    - paulcole 5y ago
      Don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it’s definitely not 100% memorization. You have to know the words and which one to play. The “right” one to play is usually obvious, but on 2-4 turns per game, the strategy becomes very very very important. With perfect word knowledge and garbage strategy you could probably be around the 25-50th best human player and with a fair bit of luck, would win some big tournaments eventually.
- toss1 5y ago
  Yup My grandfather said that "Too many great minds have been wasted playing chess.", and so always played checkers with me, always kind and teaching, but never rolling over. It took me years to win, but I still remember the three times I did before he passed away when I was 13. I've hardly ever played again. Played enough chess in HS to learn how, a few openings and just enough games to understand the intensity. I could definitely see what he meant, and it's probably a good thing my passion was already for alpine ski racing, which has similar intensity but is naturally a bit self-limiting (e.g., the lifts close and you have to go in). I've since read the saying to the effect that "Being able to play chess is a sign of intelligence, being able to plat chess very well is a sign of a wasted life.". Seems to ring true, except for the true greats.
  - bluedino 5y ago
    First one is Einstein(?) and the second is Paul Morphy
  - alar44 5y ago
    Nah that's bullshit. "Too many great minds have been wasted programming UIs." Both quotes are tongue in cheek, you're not supposed to take them seriously. If you're good at something, fuckin do it. Seeing a lot of comments in this thread from people who probably consider themselves intelligent, but haven't put the time into understanding chess, so you all have come up with some pretty creative excuses why you don't like chess. Y'all are just bad at it, and that's ok.
    - toss1 5y ago
      aaannnd . . . . Whoosh!! It isn't about how good you are; in fact it is the opposite. My grandfather was an engineer and focused on building actual things - being a productive member of society. He was also pretty alert about avoiding addictive things. His point was that the gifted minds — who can get and ARE very good at chess — tend to get addicted and squander years or decades just chasing the next tournament, the next 100 GM points, the next high, producing nothing useful, and getting no skills applicable to productive pursuits. He did not want to see me go down a path that could lead to being a chess bum any more than he'd want to see me become a ski bum, join a cult or just become a hardcore partier. All are surely enjoyable, but not a productive addition to society. (& no, I haven't got a shred of insecurity about my abilities; I was getting good at an extremely satisfying rate, but also saw what it would take to get really good, and that I'd be better off spending my time not memorizing every classic opening and variant, but instead on understanding physics and chemistry concepts ... I absolutely see the beauty of chess, and may well take it up again, but I also am grateful for by grandfather's point, especially considering how addicted I got to the adrenaline of ski racing at international levels...) And if you enjoy it and have the freedom to do that - fantastic - it's your life, do what you want - I hope you get as good as you desire and enjoy it!
- tartoran 5y ago
  I’ve had my chess learning period followed by obsessive play up to a point that after playing a few hours daily I’d see those patterns in my mind’s eye for a while afterwards. I realized it ‘s not something healthy and I stopped playing altogether. Recently I started playing online from time to time and want to make sure it never becomes an obsession again. Learning how to lose gracefully is an important milestone in one’s quest for maturity. Generally chess has some wisdom that can be carried out in other areas of life. One point worth mentioning is that no matter how complicated a situation has become there’s quite often a good way out of it if one keeps calm and looks out for solutions.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy There’s absolutely no limit to the amount of time your could spend getting better at chess. I personally lost interest due to the excessive levels of memorisation involved, which was also one of Fischer’s main complaints about the game.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "I personally lost interest due to the excessive levels of memorisation involved" You could play Fischer Random Chess (aka Chess360), which relieves players of the need to memorize openings, as there are way too many opening positions to make memorization practical.
    - AmericanChopper 5y ago
      Fischer Random is a much more rewarding game to play imo. There’s a lot less people playing it though.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I stunk at chess in college because I'd spend my time thinking about how to write a program to play chess rather than my next move. My favorite book was: "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-science/dp/0387079572/ https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-sci... which inspired parts of the computer strategy in the game Empire. Chess playing programs have gotten so good these days, there's not really any percentage in writing one.
wdb 5y ago
How's this tax free?
- TrackerFF 5y ago
  I guess he meant "tax free" as in "cash only" - not something I'd want to say in public, but what are the chances IRS will pursue these guys.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Cash under the chess board.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  Things you shouldn’t post while using your real name; that you have a side job that you don’t report income.
- rhexs 5y ago
  The tax code isn’t enforced at the cash / low income level. Thus you can vote for increased taxes to fund increased social spending and not actually take part in the taxation. In fact, you’ll likely even get additional money back filing taxes when there’s no record of your cash income. Convenient, eh?
  - empthought 5y ago
    “Gotcha!” - Lucky Ducky https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/06/14 https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/06/14
  - RockyMcNuts 5y ago
    And yet the poor get audited more than the rich ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-likely-to-get-audited/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-li...
    - rhexs 5y ago
      At low incomes, your tax return is highly likely to be incredibly simple. If you’re doing something so wrong that it generates an audit, the IRS clearly knows they’re going to strike oil with the audit. They aren’t stupid. What’s your solution? The poor should be able to commit tax fraud because going after millionaires is more important? Everyone should have to follow the tax code we’ve collectively created. It makes changing it far simpler when everyone is impacted equally.
Nav_Panel 5y ago
This is great, thanks for sharing. I've always walked by these guys but never expected that the roots ran so deep. I also love this little bit near the end: "To me, the Bible is Basic Information Before Leaving Earth—B.I.B.L.E."
- everly 5y ago
  Not sure if this is the genesis of that acronym but that is a song on GZA's classic album Liquid Swords [0]. Interestingly, the album cover [1] and lyrics include chess references throughout. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Swords#Track_listing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Swords#Track_listing [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/GZALiquidSwords.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/GZALiquidSwor...
  - 999900000999 5y ago
    Thank you for reminding me to play this song. I've been lucky enough to see most of Wu Tang live, ODB died too young, so I never saw him.
ray__ 5y ago
I love this, just subscribed. My favorite piece of advice: “I’ll give you a lesson, a half hour for $20. I have some children that come just to see me once a week and I give them a lesson—$20 for a half hour. And there’s a lot of NYU students that come by, we give them a discount for being students. One hour for 40 bucks.”
- swores 5y ago
  I think (or maybe your choice of quote just accidentally gives the impression) you're interpreting that as making NYU students believe they're getting a deal despite paying the same price as "some children", but actually in the previous paragraph: > If you want a game, I say one game, five dollars, five minutes. So the children and NYU Students are both getting a discount (40/hr for both types of student vs 60/hr for non-teaching games). Although I suspect he'd be willing to negotiate to the same 40/hr to play 12x timed 5min games if someone asked.
  - curiousllama 5y ago
    5min games are up to 10min long - 5min for each player
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dehrmann 5y ago
  From what I've gathered (worked with a few good players, but I'm not good), the way to get good is grinding, but specifically known openings and endgames (some version of this is how you get good at anything). The midgame is where the play isn't so robotic. Hopefully anyone paying for lessons is practicing openings on their own (for free).
  - simulate-me 5y ago
    Yea the middle game is the easy part /s
everly 5y ago
E.G.G.S. was my favorite: "This guy over here, Abdul. He’s Vice President of the Pace University Chess Club. Now, you hear somebody tell you they’re the vice president of a university chess club, you’re going to automatically think they’re good. So when he tells people they have a 95% chance of beating him, they think he’s hustling. But it’s actually the truth. He’s not very good."
- jsnodlin 5y ago
DantesKite 5y ago
That was a nice read. It felt like I was taking a stroll through a New York city park.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
I have played a chess hustler in Chicago a few times when my parents took me to the air and water show when I was in high school. Note that these chess hustlers were playing at around $1 dollar a game. I would say that the average person doesn't even understand how to get into checkmate (even fools / scholars mate). So the game against most people is much less than five minutes. But, I was rated in my prime around 1000 ELO. The hustle has to conclude within five minutes or less. If you get past that state they basically either won't play with you or let you use one of their boards. The easiest way to do this is to lock the board and don't get into any situation where a piece is capture and don't capture the their pieces. In Chicago the hustler was playing multiple people I believe (simul) which their rating would be at minimum 1000 ELO
btilly 5y ago
I used to live in NYC 20 years ago. I played a few of the hustlers. Some you will lose to, but most aren't actually that good. They are entertaining though. One moment that I will never forget was watching two hustlers play each other for fun. The position was something like white had a pawn at a4 and a king at c7. Black had a pawn at h5 and a king at f3. Black to move. Black offered a draw, white said OK, I let out an involuntary, "WHAT?" They drew and black said, "You really think white can win here? I'll bet you $5 on that. I agreed so we played. ... h4 a5 h3 a6 h2 a7 h1(Q) a8(Q)+ Black was in check, and no matter where he moved his king, his queen was toast. Easiest $5 I ever made.
- hutrdvnj 5y ago
  Do you remember the complete PGN of the game?
  - btilly 5y ago
    I have no clue. It was a blitz game and I was just a bystander.
- daveevad 5y ago
  Isn't that essentially the same endgame at the ending of Searching for Bobby Fischer?
  - adharmad 5y ago
    Yes the same. The pawn race and subsequent diagonal pin are the same.
- smarmgoblin 5y ago
  That’s wild! I’m not very good but if black offered me a draw in this position my thought would be “his pawn is faster, so why would he offer a draw? Unless he thinks he’s losing for some reason…” which would be the hint to look for the tactic. I guess in many queen/king endgames you can have perpetual checks, but accepting the draw wouldn’t be my first instinct.
rvieira 5y ago
That was a really nice read. Thanks.
every 5y ago
I had a chess phase. I used to play a guy with some national ranking. He wiped the floor with me. He told me my game pretty much sucked but he enjoyed playing me because I was always seeing and doing things that would have never occurred to him. And that was the apex of my chess career...
- tonguez 5y ago
  thanks for sharing
- INTPenis 5y ago
  Heh that sounds just like my story with my dad. He was national champ in the 80s. I never had enough interest in the game to get good, would rather play Doom on his DOS computer than chess. But whenever we did play I'd make brainless moves and he'd get this puzzled look on his face and start thinking. He once told me the same thing, that I make unusual moves that forces him to rethink his strategy.
  - yonig 5y ago
    In jest, I had a teacher say something along the lines of “Nobel Prize winners are experts at the end of their careers or the novices at the beginning.” Thinking outside the box can be made so much easier when you don’t know where it begins and ends
mellosouls 5y ago
For those of you who like this stuff, there are loads of those sorts of games on youtube, e.g. the Coffee Chess channel, which has recently been featuring Hikaru and the Botez Sisters (who themselves have been touring various places including the famous NYC hustlers). Coffee Chess: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq6gYeqi8RIvVeF-sJwdaBg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq6gYeqi8RIvVeF-sJwdaBg
weekendvampire 5y ago
There's also a guy who plays in Times Square in the evenings who's really fun to talk to. I've played him twice and lost badly both times, but one day...
saucymew 5y ago
I’ve played in the NY parks, Marcel is the best player of the bunch interviewed here. Sadly, after COVID most of the Bryant/Union Sq games seem to have disappeared. It’s mostly Washington Sq now. But there’s this one guy who comes and goes. Always wears these dapper, beautiful robes, and plays up to $100/game. I’ve yet to work myself up to step up to play him… Can’t wait to visit the park games next time.
- georgeoliver 5y ago
  There were a half dozen or so tables in Union Square a week ago. Bryant unfortunately wasn't happening, though I noticed the chairs on that side of the park were chained up, so maybe they haven't opened it yet.
  - saucymew 5y ago
    Thanks for the update. The last time I was in Union Sq was Aug 2020 and it was empty, glad to hear it’s still thriving!
SeanLuke 5y ago
I used to play Chinese Chess on and off in Hong Kong. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi). Just has NY has chess hustlers in parks, Hong Kong has Chinese Chess hustlers in parks. The hustlers were always excited to see me, a white American, stopping by and asking for a game and some tips: I was fresh meat! They'd gather in big groups to watch the sucker. But after my first move (the "P-K4" of Chinese Chess: Canon to beneath the center Pawn) their faces would change radically, as it suddenly became obvious that I knew somewhat how to play. :-) Now while Chess strategy transfers reasonably well to Chinese Chess, I'm not particularly good, and certainly not better than the hustlers. But I'd often beat them because they couldn't get it out of their heads that they weren't playing an American patsy, and so they kept making showy moves rather than good ones. It was a lot of fun.
- yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
  How much money was on the table?
nojs 5y ago
> And let me tell you something. People make mistakes early in their life. I made mistakes early in my life. I got locked up when I was living in Maryland, selling drugs and stuff. But that doesn't mean that the game was over. That's how I equate chess with life. Maybe true in life, but not really true in chess. If you blunder early against a decent player, your chances of winning are very low!
WalterBright 5y ago
I would play chess against my mom as a kid. She'd read a book while playing. I'd spend a long time considering my next move, and she'd just look away from her book for a moment for hers. She always won handily :-) Much later, it occurred to me to wonder what her chess playing past was, but by then it was too late.
redwood 5y ago
SW* corner of Washington Sqr Park :P
pclmulqdq 5y ago
They can also teach you how to cheat without getting caught. They will teach you how to double down on the lie when you get caught. I have played against chess hustlers 5 times in Washington Square Park, caught 4 of them cheating on the spot, and figured out the last one at the end of the game. I'm not an amazing chess player (~1500), but fairly comfortable playing blitz (a bad hobby from when I used to play chess in school). I walked away in disgust each time, and one of them had the guts to threaten me and insist that I was the cheater. Chess hustlers are phenomenal at cheating, but only okay at chess. These are not admirable people dedicated to a skill. These are grifters.
- syspec 5y ago
  How were they cheating? Moving pieces when you were not looking? Adding more time to their clock?
  - nabaraz 5y ago
    I have played twice with them and they made illegal moves on one and the time ran out on another. I cannot confirm if my opponent was using hacked clock (I strongly believe he was) but I am pretty sure his diagonal move was illegal. He argued his piece was somewhere else and I got fed up and left.
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    What I have seen are: - Illegal moves, particularly with knights. - Adjusting pieces onto squares they are not on: edging a rook towards another square slowly, then "adjusting" it onto that square to essentially get a free move. - Dropping pieces and putting them on new squares. - Double capturing: picking up your piece as though they are going to take it with theirs, then moving one of their pieces to take a different piece.
    - pdevr 5y ago
      This summarizes it well. Two more (in fact, the most frequent ones I saw) are: (1) He moves a piece, accidentally another piece tumbles down on the board, he adjusts it, and meanwhile, one of the opponent's crucial pawns magically disappear. (2) Same as above, with opponent's pawn (or his pawn) magically moving to a better location for him.
999900000999 5y ago
My theory here is that make the vast majority of money playing against people like me. I roughly know the rules of Chess. I consider myself to be a smart person, but I have never been good at chess. Or checkers for that matter
siskiyou 5y ago
Comment from my 87yo father in law, a retired attorney: "Years ago I represented Yasser Seirawan, then the U.S. chess champ. He was interested in the Washington Square scene so I took him downtown. Of course, the hustlers were after him: he looked like a reasonably prosperous guy. He accepted after playing a little hard to get. The shock was obvious when he played much faster than the clock and won easily. He wouldn't take their money and when he told them his name they loved having played against him especially since he didn't complete the hustle by taking their money."

249 points by gautamcgoel 5y ago

I used to play a lot of chess, and it totally took over my life. So I never play it anymore, because for me it's too addictive. For some people (like some of these hustlers and others who can make a living from it) that's ok, but for me I wanted more from life than just playing chess all the time and thinking about nothing but chess.. but for certain types of people it has a way of sucking you in and can be a way of avoiding life. However, there were plenty of positive things I learned from chess, like thinking ahead, being able to concentrate in distracting environments, and having lots of patience.

mi100hael 5y ago
I've noticed that the #1 positive thing I learned from chess is rarely mentioned by others, and I'm not sure why that is. For me it was: Pattern recognition. I many cases (at least at the intermediate level), winning/losing games doesn't come down to who can "think three moves ahead," it comes down to whether someone can recognize that a pattern of three moves will result in a particular outcome. It may be a nuance, but it's actually an important one because it eliminates the notion that someone has to be of above-average intelligence and discover new moves on the fly to succeed. In actuality, that skill of pattern recognition can be practiced, honed, and applied in numerous areas of life. Playing chess is such a pure form of the skill that it opened my eyes to how many other activities can benefit from a similar approach.
- curiousllama 5y ago
  Definitely agree. It’s not even super purposeful recognition. It’s a feeling like “this seems bad”, and looking for why, only to figure out your opponent’s likely plan. It’s much better to be less intelligent and have that feeling, than be more intelligent and not even know to look for the danger.
- riotnrrd 5y ago
  That's a well-known aspect of "expert" level chess player thinking! There's a famous experiment that demonstrated this. Researchers briefly showed set-up chess boards to novices (little to no chess experience) and expert players (2000+ ELO) and then asked the players to recreate the board they just saw. If the set-up was from a real game (not necessarily a famous or studied game) experts performed far, far better. However, if the chess board was just a random scramble of pieces, novices and experts had the same recall ability. Essentially, expert players saw the patterns at work in legitimate mid-game set-ups and this helped the recall task.
  - prmph 5y ago
    Yes this is an interesting result that I recall from my days when I was into chess. But this result speaks to something more general that is interesting as well. It seems high levels of skill in many other fields is associated with incredible ability to recall details about a performance in that field. If I recall correctly, Bobby Fischer was able to perfectly recall positions (and his analysis of them) from games he had played years ago (and consider how many games a professional chess player might play in a career). The question I have is, what exactly is the connection? Is this association essential? And is it the incredible memory that leads to high skill, or the it's the reverse?
paulcole 5y ago
Same for me but with Scrabble. Saw the same thing in that scene. I don’t necessarily want more from life, but I didn’t want to be obsessed with Scrabble any longer.
- jamiek88 5y ago
  And it’s just 100% memorization. The French champion doesn’t even speak French for example.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    Don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it’s definitely not 100% memorization. You have to know the words and which one to play. The “right” one to play is usually obvious, but on 2-4 turns per game, the strategy becomes very very very important. With perfect word knowledge and garbage strategy you could probably be around the 25-50th best human player and with a fair bit of luck, would win some big tournaments eventually.
toss1 5y ago
Yup My grandfather said that "Too many great minds have been wasted playing chess.", and so always played checkers with me, always kind and teaching, but never rolling over. It took me years to win, but I still remember the three times I did before he passed away when I was 13. I've hardly ever played again. Played enough chess in HS to learn how, a few openings and just enough games to understand the intensity. I could definitely see what he meant, and it's probably a good thing my passion was already for alpine ski racing, which has similar intensity but is naturally a bit self-limiting (e.g., the lifts close and you have to go in). I've since read the saying to the effect that "Being able to play chess is a sign of intelligence, being able to plat chess very well is a sign of a wasted life.". Seems to ring true, except for the true greats.
- bluedino 5y ago
  First one is Einstein(?) and the second is Paul Morphy
- alar44 5y ago
  Nah that's bullshit. "Too many great minds have been wasted programming UIs." Both quotes are tongue in cheek, you're not supposed to take them seriously. If you're good at something, fuckin do it. Seeing a lot of comments in this thread from people who probably consider themselves intelligent, but haven't put the time into understanding chess, so you all have come up with some pretty creative excuses why you don't like chess. Y'all are just bad at it, and that's ok.
  - toss1 5y ago
    aaannnd . . . . Whoosh!! It isn't about how good you are; in fact it is the opposite. My grandfather was an engineer and focused on building actual things - being a productive member of society. He was also pretty alert about avoiding addictive things. His point was that the gifted minds — who can get and ARE very good at chess — tend to get addicted and squander years or decades just chasing the next tournament, the next 100 GM points, the next high, producing nothing useful, and getting no skills applicable to productive pursuits. He did not want to see me go down a path that could lead to being a chess bum any more than he'd want to see me become a ski bum, join a cult or just become a hardcore partier. All are surely enjoyable, but not a productive addition to society. (& no, I haven't got a shred of insecurity about my abilities; I was getting good at an extremely satisfying rate, but also saw what it would take to get really good, and that I'd be better off spending my time not memorizing every classic opening and variant, but instead on understanding physics and chemistry concepts ... I absolutely see the beauty of chess, and may well take it up again, but I also am grateful for by grandfather's point, especially considering how addicted I got to the adrenaline of ski racing at international levels...) And if you enjoy it and have the freedom to do that - fantastic - it's your life, do what you want - I hope you get as good as you desire and enjoy it!
tartoran 5y ago
I’ve had my chess learning period followed by obsessive play up to a point that after playing a few hours daily I’d see those patterns in my mind’s eye for a while afterwards. I realized it ‘s not something healthy and I stopped playing altogether. Recently I started playing online from time to time and want to make sure it never becomes an obsession again. Learning how to lose gracefully is an important milestone in one’s quest for maturity. Generally chess has some wisdom that can be carried out in other areas of life. One point worth mentioning is that no matter how complicated a situation has become there’s quite often a good way out of it if one keeps calm and looks out for solutions.
AmericanChopper 5y ago
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy There’s absolutely no limit to the amount of time your could spend getting better at chess. I personally lost interest due to the excessive levels of memorisation involved, which was also one of Fischer’s main complaints about the game.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "I personally lost interest due to the excessive levels of memorisation involved" You could play Fischer Random Chess (aka Chess360), which relieves players of the need to memorize openings, as there are way too many opening positions to make memorization practical.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    Fischer Random is a much more rewarding game to play imo. There’s a lot less people playing it though.
WalterBright 5y ago
I stunk at chess in college because I'd spend my time thinking about how to write a program to play chess rather than my next move. My favorite book was: "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-science/dp/0387079572/ https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-sci... which inspired parts of the computer strategy in the game Empire. Chess playing programs have gotten so good these days, there's not really any percentage in writing one.

wdb 5y ago

How's this tax free?

TrackerFF 5y ago
I guess he meant "tax free" as in "cash only" - not something I'd want to say in public, but what are the chances IRS will pursue these guys.
goatlover 5y ago
Cash under the chess board.
brianwawok 5y ago
Things you shouldn’t post while using your real name; that you have a side job that you don’t report income.
rhexs 5y ago
The tax code isn’t enforced at the cash / low income level. Thus you can vote for increased taxes to fund increased social spending and not actually take part in the taxation. In fact, you’ll likely even get additional money back filing taxes when there’s no record of your cash income. Convenient, eh?
- empthought 5y ago
  “Gotcha!” - Lucky Ducky https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/06/14 https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2003/06/14
- RockyMcNuts 5y ago
  And yet the poor get audited more than the rich ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-likely-to-get-audited/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-li...
  - rhexs 5y ago
    At low incomes, your tax return is highly likely to be incredibly simple. If you’re doing something so wrong that it generates an audit, the IRS clearly knows they’re going to strike oil with the audit. They aren’t stupid. What’s your solution? The poor should be able to commit tax fraud because going after millionaires is more important? Everyone should have to follow the tax code we’ve collectively created. It makes changing it far simpler when everyone is impacted equally.

Nav_Panel 5y ago

This is great, thanks for sharing. I've always walked by these guys but never expected that the roots ran so deep. I also love this little bit near the end: "To me, the Bible is Basic Information Before Leaving Earth—B.I.B.L.E."

everly 5y ago
Not sure if this is the genesis of that acronym but that is a song on GZA's classic album Liquid Swords [0]. Interestingly, the album cover [1] and lyrics include chess references throughout. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Swords#Track_listing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Swords#Track_listing [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/GZALiquidSwords.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/GZALiquidSwor...
- 999900000999 5y ago
  Thank you for reminding me to play this song. I've been lucky enough to see most of Wu Tang live, ODB died too young, so I never saw him.

ray__ 5y ago

I love this, just subscribed. My favorite piece of advice: “I’ll give you a lesson, a half hour for $20. I have some children that come just to see me once a week and I give them a lesson—$20 for a half hour. And there’s a lot of NYU students that come by, we give them a discount for being students. One hour for 40 bucks.”

swores 5y ago
I think (or maybe your choice of quote just accidentally gives the impression) you're interpreting that as making NYU students believe they're getting a deal despite paying the same price as "some children", but actually in the previous paragraph: > If you want a game, I say one game, five dollars, five minutes. So the children and NYU Students are both getting a discount (40/hr for both types of student vs 60/hr for non-teaching games). Although I suspect he'd be willing to negotiate to the same 40/hr to play 12x timed 5min games if someone asked.
- curiousllama 5y ago
  5min games are up to 10min long - 5min for each player
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dehrmann 5y ago
From what I've gathered (worked with a few good players, but I'm not good), the way to get good is grinding, but specifically known openings and endgames (some version of this is how you get good at anything). The midgame is where the play isn't so robotic. Hopefully anyone paying for lessons is practicing openings on their own (for free).
- simulate-me 5y ago
  Yea the middle game is the easy part /s

everly 5y ago

E.G.G.S. was my favorite: "This guy over here, Abdul. He’s Vice President of the Pace University Chess Club. Now, you hear somebody tell you they’re the vice president of a university chess club, you’re going to automatically think they’re good. So when he tells people they have a 95% chance of beating him, they think he’s hustling. But it’s actually the truth. He’s not very good."

jsnodlin 5y ago

DantesKite 5y ago

That was a nice read. It felt like I was taking a stroll through a New York city park.

zitterbewegung 5y ago

I have played a chess hustler in Chicago a few times when my parents took me to the air and water show when I was in high school. Note that these chess hustlers were playing at around $1 dollar a game. I would say that the average person doesn't even understand how to get into checkmate (even fools / scholars mate). So the game against most people is much less than five minutes. But, I was rated in my prime around 1000 ELO. The hustle has to conclude within five minutes or less. If you get past that state they basically either won't play with you or let you use one of their boards. The easiest way to do this is to lock the board and don't get into any situation where a piece is capture and don't capture the their pieces. In Chicago the hustler was playing multiple people I believe (simul) which their rating would be at minimum 1000 ELO

btilly 5y ago

I used to live in NYC 20 years ago. I played a few of the hustlers. Some you will lose to, but most aren't actually that good. They are entertaining though. One moment that I will never forget was watching two hustlers play each other for fun. The position was something like white had a pawn at a4 and a king at c7. Black had a pawn at h5 and a king at f3. Black to move. Black offered a draw, white said OK, I let out an involuntary, "WHAT?" They drew and black said, "You really think white can win here? I'll bet you $5 on that. I agreed so we played. ... h4 a5 h3 a6 h2 a7 h1(Q) a8(Q)+ Black was in check, and no matter where he moved his king, his queen was toast. Easiest $5 I ever made.

hutrdvnj 5y ago
Do you remember the complete PGN of the game?
- btilly 5y ago
  I have no clue. It was a blitz game and I was just a bystander.
daveevad 5y ago
Isn't that essentially the same endgame at the ending of Searching for Bobby Fischer?
- adharmad 5y ago
  Yes the same. The pawn race and subsequent diagonal pin are the same.
smarmgoblin 5y ago
That’s wild! I’m not very good but if black offered me a draw in this position my thought would be “his pawn is faster, so why would he offer a draw? Unless he thinks he’s losing for some reason…” which would be the hint to look for the tactic. I guess in many queen/king endgames you can have perpetual checks, but accepting the draw wouldn’t be my first instinct.

rvieira 5y ago

That was a really nice read. Thanks.

every 5y ago

I had a chess phase. I used to play a guy with some national ranking. He wiped the floor with me. He told me my game pretty much sucked but he enjoyed playing me because I was always seeing and doing things that would have never occurred to him. And that was the apex of my chess career...

tonguez 5y ago
thanks for sharing
INTPenis 5y ago
Heh that sounds just like my story with my dad. He was national champ in the 80s. I never had enough interest in the game to get good, would rather play Doom on his DOS computer than chess. But whenever we did play I'd make brainless moves and he'd get this puzzled look on his face and start thinking. He once told me the same thing, that I make unusual moves that forces him to rethink his strategy.
- yonig 5y ago
  In jest, I had a teacher say something along the lines of “Nobel Prize winners are experts at the end of their careers or the novices at the beginning.” Thinking outside the box can be made so much easier when you don’t know where it begins and ends

mellosouls 5y ago

For those of you who like this stuff, there are loads of those sorts of games on youtube, e.g. the Coffee Chess channel, which has recently been featuring Hikaru and the Botez Sisters (who themselves have been touring various places including the famous NYC hustlers). Coffee Chess: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq6gYeqi8RIvVeF-sJwdaBg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq6gYeqi8RIvVeF-sJwdaBg

weekendvampire 5y ago

There's also a guy who plays in Times Square in the evenings who's really fun to talk to. I've played him twice and lost badly both times, but one day...

saucymew 5y ago

I’ve played in the NY parks, Marcel is the best player of the bunch interviewed here. Sadly, after COVID most of the Bryant/Union Sq games seem to have disappeared. It’s mostly Washington Sq now. But there’s this one guy who comes and goes. Always wears these dapper, beautiful robes, and plays up to $100/game. I’ve yet to work myself up to step up to play him… Can’t wait to visit the park games next time.

georgeoliver 5y ago
There were a half dozen or so tables in Union Square a week ago. Bryant unfortunately wasn't happening, though I noticed the chairs on that side of the park were chained up, so maybe they haven't opened it yet.
- saucymew 5y ago
  Thanks for the update. The last time I was in Union Sq was Aug 2020 and it was empty, glad to hear it’s still thriving!

SeanLuke 5y ago

I used to play Chinese Chess on and off in Hong Kong. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi). Just has NY has chess hustlers in parks, Hong Kong has Chinese Chess hustlers in parks. The hustlers were always excited to see me, a white American, stopping by and asking for a game and some tips: I was fresh meat! They'd gather in big groups to watch the sucker. But after my first move (the "P-K4" of Chinese Chess: Canon to beneath the center Pawn) their faces would change radically, as it suddenly became obvious that I knew somewhat how to play. :-) Now while Chess strategy transfers reasonably well to Chinese Chess, I'm not particularly good, and certainly not better than the hustlers. But I'd often beat them because they couldn't get it out of their heads that they weren't playing an American patsy, and so they kept making showy moves rather than good ones. It was a lot of fun.

yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
How much money was on the table?

nojs 5y ago

> And let me tell you something. People make mistakes early in their life. I made mistakes early in my life. I got locked up when I was living in Maryland, selling drugs and stuff. But that doesn't mean that the game was over. That's how I equate chess with life. Maybe true in life, but not really true in chess. If you blunder early against a decent player, your chances of winning are very low!

WalterBright 5y ago

I would play chess against my mom as a kid. She'd read a book while playing. I'd spend a long time considering my next move, and she'd just look away from her book for a moment for hers. She always won handily :-) Much later, it occurred to me to wonder what her chess playing past was, but by then it was too late.

redwood 5y ago

SW* corner of Washington Sqr Park :P

pclmulqdq 5y ago

They can also teach you how to cheat without getting caught. They will teach you how to double down on the lie when you get caught. I have played against chess hustlers 5 times in Washington Square Park, caught 4 of them cheating on the spot, and figured out the last one at the end of the game. I'm not an amazing chess player (~1500), but fairly comfortable playing blitz (a bad hobby from when I used to play chess in school). I walked away in disgust each time, and one of them had the guts to threaten me and insist that I was the cheater. Chess hustlers are phenomenal at cheating, but only okay at chess. These are not admirable people dedicated to a skill. These are grifters.

syspec 5y ago
How were they cheating? Moving pieces when you were not looking? Adding more time to their clock?
- nabaraz 5y ago
  I have played twice with them and they made illegal moves on one and the time ran out on another. I cannot confirm if my opponent was using hacked clock (I strongly believe he was) but I am pretty sure his diagonal move was illegal. He argued his piece was somewhere else and I got fed up and left.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  What I have seen are: - Illegal moves, particularly with knights. - Adjusting pieces onto squares they are not on: edging a rook towards another square slowly, then "adjusting" it onto that square to essentially get a free move. - Dropping pieces and putting them on new squares. - Double capturing: picking up your piece as though they are going to take it with theirs, then moving one of their pieces to take a different piece.
  - pdevr 5y ago
    This summarizes it well. Two more (in fact, the most frequent ones I saw) are: (1) He moves a piece, accidentally another piece tumbles down on the board, he adjusts it, and meanwhile, one of the opponent's crucial pawns magically disappear. (2) Same as above, with opponent's pawn (or his pawn) magically moving to a better location for him.

999900000999 5y ago

My theory here is that make the vast majority of money playing against people like me. I roughly know the rules of Chess. I consider myself to be a smart person, but I have never been good at chess. Or checkers for that matter

siskiyou 5y ago

Comment from my 87yo father in law, a retired attorney: "Years ago I represented Yasser Seirawan, then the U.S. chess champ. He was interested in the Washington Square scene so I took him downtown. Of course, the hustlers were after him: he looked like a reasonably prosperous guy. He accepted after playing a little hard to get. The shock was obvious when he played much faster than the clock and won easily. He wouldn't take their money and when he told them his name they loved having played against him especially since he didn't complete the hustle by taking their money."