The Last Gamesman by Asa Hoffmann

Author:Asa Hoffmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press

Other Chess Club Venues

“The winner of the game is the player who

makes the next-to-last mistake.”

- Savielly Tartakower

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, there were quite a few other places to play chess besides the famous Marshall and Manhattan Chess Clubs. Some of these were membership clubs, but most were pay by the hour or by the game. The proprietors supplied equipment. Sadly, most of these are no more, driven out by high rents.

London Terrace Chess Club

The London Terrace was a membership club that met weekly in a penthouse apartment in the London Terrace Towers in Chelsea on the West side of Manhattan. One could go to the roof and see a fantastic view of Manhattan and the Hudson River. The club itself featured old style wooden furniture and chess sets in a quiet and pleasant environment. My family lived in London Terrace until I was about three years old. My father was an executive at the club and brought me here as a teenager. It was my first exposure to a real chess club. Within a few years I won the club championship three times and was given permanent possession of the silver club trophy (which in lean times I was forced to sell).

Chess dignitaries visited occasionally. The best-known regular was the artist, Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was a chess master in his earlier days. Tall and thin, he would sit quietly, smoking his pipe, playing an excellent game of chess. Duchamp had been on the French Olympic Chess Team when he was younger. I played him many times and held my own against him. Another famous member was Louis Persinger, the famous violinist and teacher of Yehuda Menuhin and Isaac Stern, who was also a capable chess player.

In the early 1960’s, a gentleman arrived from the Bronx named Murray Bronstein. He was a charismatic personality and recruited players from all over New York so we could get a team strong enough to challenge the Marshall and the Manhattan Chess clubs in the Metropolitan League. Murray brought the players he knew from the Bronx. I brought my friends from the Manhattan Chess Club and from Columbia University. We didn’t win the league but with this lineup we finished near the top. This was long before the advent of recruiting strong players from all over the world to play on US National Teams and Collegiate Teams, as is common today. We did it first!

The Baltic Chess Club

In the early 1960’s, there was also a small club which met in an apartment around the corner from my house on Park Avenue and 70th Street. This was the Baltic Chess Club. Everyone there was from the various Baltic states, mostly from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The Baltic also competed in the Metropolitan League, and I visited there while playing for London Terrace. I never did find out what the criteria were for joining the Baltic. Strong players I remember there were Pamiljens, Znotins, Rankis and Kalme.

The Chess House

The Chess House was in a beautiful building that once housed a bank on West 72nd Street.

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