GM Maurice Ashley announces mate-in-23 in a two minute speed game against a hustler in NYC.
Two minute chess at it’s finest.
In this youtube video, Grandmaster Maurice Ashley plays a trash talking hustler in NYC’s Washington Square Park.
-The park made famous in the movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5vnpOp0U_g
Toward the end of the game, Maurice announces mate-in-23. Pretty funny. The game didn’t go on for 23 more moves though. Interesting tidbit is that the hustler tried to swindle Maurice out of a piece by knocking it over and placing the piece on a different square. Later the hustler moves a pawn and tell Maurice that he lost the game, but Maurice said he’s heard of en passant, and takes the hustler’s pawn. The game was pretty much over after that.
Fair warning, if your a tourist and play there, assume the hustlers will cheat to win if they can get away with it.
This has been around for a while on the Internet. It’s a fun video, mostly because the street player has no idea who Ashley is.
As to cheating to win, what this guy tried to do is not all that common from my experience there. More common is excellent trash talk to distract the opponent. The other thing they will do is have a touch sensor clock. Many people when they first play these fellows are not accustomed to the touch sensor and lose time when they hit the clock with a piece held in their hand.
What you can also do is cut a deal by saying, look you’re going to make $20 win or lose, but we’re going to play six games instead of the usual 4 at $5 a win. I was put on to that idea by a member of the Marshall. I made the offer, it was accepted and we had six fun games. I think the guy really appreciated not having the pressure to win and instead just enjoyed the games knowing he had the money. These players really live close to the line and it isn’t always a good day for them in the park.
I wasn’t really planning on going to NYC anytime soon. LOL. I didn’t look at the date, but I figured the video was probably old, but I still thought it was funny enough to post for anybody that hadn’t seen it yet. :mrgreen:
As far as trash talking, I think “Vinnie”, played by Lawrence Fishburne in Searching For Bobby Fischer gives a pretty good rendition of how the hustlers like to trash talk their opponents to distract them. It’s a fairly relentless barrage of trash talk.
Curious, but does anybody have a rough idea about the skill levels of the trash talking hustlers in Washington Park?
It’s really a classic encounter…doesn’t really age. That was a good trash talking scene. Back around 2010, I had a student in the High School chess club I ran in Andover, MA who was an honors literature student who trash talked quoting Shakespeare, Marlowe, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Johnson and many others. His trash talk was always totally on point to what was happening on the board. It was so funny and literate that you lost time getting sucked into pondering what he had said. I wish I’d videoed some of those games.
Some of the Washington Square Park players are pretty good. IIRC, Roman Dzindzichasvili used to play there when he first arrived in the US. I think he played the role of the Russian park player in the Searching film. There was another Russian there who would only play one minute bullet games. He was virtually unbeatable at that time limit. A Marshall member once told me that if you could get him to play three minute games, a strong player could beat him. If you Google the question of their ability you’ll likely find some estimates.
I lived in NYC for 5ish years late 70’s early 80’s. I played lots of chess in USCF events -commercial league of NY etal. Lived in the village and played hundreds of games against the hustlers in Washington square park and also downtown across from the old Merrill lynch building.I was around a 2000-2100 USCF player-so certainly not real good but decent. Those hustlers used to destroy me-so back then I can vouch they were pretty darn good
Brian I don’t remember the names of any of the places my wife and I used to hang out at in the village.I remember one place on the south side of the park that had sawdust on the floors but the name? I worked downtown and spent a lot of nights at Harry’s.My wife worked in midtown and we used to go to PJ Clarke’s a lot. Back in those days all the bars had nice free spreads at happy hour-so a lot of our dinners back then consisted of a few drinks and free bar food. NYC is a wonderful place to live-lots of great memories of my time there.
