NYC series no.7: chess in Greenwich Village

On Sunday morning, after church, we took the subway to Washington Square. There is a corner of the park there where chess is played but that part of the park was under renovation and closed. We walked over to the arch, and the boys had strawberry popsicles on a bench nearby.

We walked over to Thompson Street, just before Bleecker Street, which is sometimes known as the chess district, where there are two chess stores on the narrow street. We went into the first. There were two rows of tables with chess sets, and a sign that said you had to pay $3 to watch and another sign that said the store was open 24 hours. There were only a few people inside. A gentleman was teaching a young boy. The boy's mother sat beside her son. The boy squirmed in his seat and didn't seem particularly absorbed in the lesson, but the teacher was very good and very patient.

The boys looked at the chess sets for sale. I didn't get the impression that they sold a lot of sets, but the selection was unique. The store showed signs that it had been around for many, many years. The boys also found some chess t-shirts. They were very reasonable in price. I waited until the lesson was over, and sometime passed before the mother was finished. They were setting up a series of regular lessons. When they finally concluded, I introduced myself to the teacher and asked if he gave drop in lessons. He said that he did, but the lesson was one hour. We were supposed to meet up with Ariel soon, so I said I didn't think we had that much time. We arranged for a short 1/2 hour lesson.

The teacher was very good with children, and he packed a lot within the half hour. I explained that Jackson knew the game pretty well but that I was his teacher and I doubted how well I could teach him beyond some rudimentary level. The teacher was also interested in Rylee, and I told him that Rylee knew the moves of the pieces and was already seeing the plays on the board.

Jackson sat opposite the teacher and Rylee sat at the end of the table. Cyndi came and went, checking out the other merchants on the street. She told me later about a meditative bowl she found. The teacher went through some opening strategies to control the center of the board and a simple end game to show what he called the "force field" and getting in the King's face. He explained how a pawn can take another pawn en passant, castling, the value of the pieces, and stalemate. I thought the teacher could move quickly, partly because he saw how readily Jackson understood and could play against him. Jackson is particularly proud of seeing traps, and the teacher had a clear description of the forms of traps.

At the end, the teacher turned his attention to Rylee with a technique he called the parachute. He'd place white pieces around the board, then drop one black piece onto a square and ask Ry which white piece or pieces could take the black piece. Ry was very quiet. The teacher watched Ry's eyes and he could see how Ry looked at the entire board until he saw the move. In a very short time, Ry would then move the white piece to take the black piece. The teacher would then put the black piece on another square and repeat the exercise. Ry never hesitated to move the correct white piece.

I was so appreciative of this short lesson. I talked with the man, and we exchanged email addresses. He even suggested we could continue lessons via Skype on the internet. A different world, I thought, considering the suggestion seriously, where the student lives in Albuquerque and the teacher lives in New York City. He told me it would be new for him, too. I told him Jackson would know how to use the internet for the lessons. Cyndi thought they could make a trade.

We walked down Bleecker Street, noting its close approximation to our name, and had a pizza at a long-established pizzeria in Greenwich Village before getting back on the subway to Canal Street, where Ariel would pick us up for a trip to Brooklyn.

We have a chess set at home, a simple wooden one in a tin box, that I bought online from FAO Schwarz for $5 years ago. I thought we could find a magnetic chess set at the store when we set out that day, but we didn't see anything there. When we got to Chicago Midway on Tuesday, we found one in a store next to where we had lunch. The boys played together in the restaurant and in the terminal and on the plane going back home.