<note: I drafted this essay some time ago, but am only now getting around to posting it. I hope you enjoy!>
Chess at Panther Hollow
I went to Panther Hollow Inn last night because I heard they play chess there. Panther Hollow is a bar in Oakland near the University of Pittsburgh. It consists of a little barroom and a partition with a few tables in the back. Chess is played on these tables. Two games were underway when I arrived with my rolled-up tournament board and weighted pieces.
I heard about Panther Hollow from a guy I met at the public library a few weeks ago. He alluded to several “crazy Russian men” who drank a lot and played well. As it turned out, he was exactly right.
I called the place ahead of time to find out what their hours are and when the chess players show up. “It’s not really organized,” the employee told me over the phone. “Personally, I think chess players are weird.”
* * *
An old man with longish, stringy grey hair and beard sat chain-smoking in one corner of the room. He was thin and wore a shabby cotton suit. His Russian accent was very strong. He looked like Rasputin might have looked if Rasputin had been a modern Pittsburgh homeless man. The other players told me in hushed tones that he was the strongest player ever to frequent Panther Hollow. Their stories about him made me wonder how many gods and heroes walk among us unnoticed. How many anonymous great-ones do we pass on the sidewalks without knowing?
Rasputin was playing his opposite. A high-strung character, he got up and walked around frequently, during which time the Russian just sat sideways in his seat with his legs crossed, smoking and looking very thin. He stared at his feet or off into space, and drank from his pitcher of beer.
The opponent had his own pitcher of beer. He was probably in his forties. He wore a grey t-shirt and had thin, greasy black hair. He sat up straight and bent his head over the board using his jutting swivel-neck. He rested his elbows on the table and put his hands in various positions on his head, and then moved them around to other places on his head. Eventually he would make a move, stand up, and swear.
* * *
Meanwhile, there was another game going on at the next table. A middle-aged high school history teacher with graying hair was playing another Russian, younger than Rasputin and more talkative, with a squashed nose. This person turned out to be the guy who makes the pizzas. Urban Spoon says that Panther Hollow Inn has good pizzas. He found it hard to concentrate on the game in-between making pizzas. The history teacher beat him, and then I played the teacher. I lost. The teacher recorded all his moves in a little spiral notebook.
Then two more people showed up. One was a college student who boasted about his abilities in a way that made it clear he no idea what he was talking about.
The other was a balding, portly man with an unsettling knowledge of the game and a great willingness to teach, which belied an enduring passion for chess and an subtle kind of loneliness. I played a few games with him—but in truth there was no playing him; He played himself. He knew the “correct” moves (there are, in fact, correct and incorrect moves in chess), and he would tell me if I made a wrong move, why it was wrong, and what the correct move was. This explanation often involved projecting multiple possibilities of four or five moves each, all of which were “inferior” to the lines which were precipitated by the correct move.
He said all this in a matter-of-fact way which I found very agreeable. He had that classic, didactic kind of teaching style from which I love to learn. As much as he knew about the game, he was still interested in it, and he never hesitated to declare a move of mine to be “interesting, very interesting. Now, this position presents a number of problems…” I do not know whether this portly scholar ever played crazy Rasputin, but I imagine their personalities would clash.
I told him I played chess online. Most of the older chess players I talk to deride online chess services, but this gentleman conceded their uses. “I used to use chess databases sometimes myself,” he said. He then told me about the new computer he recently purchased, and how he could get a lot done as long as he didn’t get fixated on porn.
* * *
Finally, the time came for me to play old Rasputin. I had learned from the other players that he only played timed games. I do not own a chess timer, but the concept was not completely foreign to me, as most online games have time constraints. He set the timer for five minutes. His pitcher was nearly empty.
I played as the back pieces, and deployed an opening that I had been working on—the closed Sicilian. I lost, of course. After the game he said, “That closed-Sicilian, it was not good.” He reset the pieces. I asked him to demonstrate the Sicilian. He refused.
He told me about how he used to be a chess teacher in Russia, which the portly scholar had already told me earlier that night. He was no longer a teacher, the scholar suggested, because of how difficult it is to keep a job when you are drunk at all hours of the day. I looked at his face and realized he was old before his time.
“Chess is hard game,” the old man continued in his thick accent and incomplete English. “Chess is obsession. I know many people who were very good at chess, but were not very good at life.” He nodded gravely. I took a drink.
That was the last game I played at Panther Hollow. I rode the bus home, greeted my wife and friends, and resolved not to play chess again for a long while.
