How's this tax free?
Things you shouldn’t post while using your real name; that you have a side job that you don’t report income.
Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
11–20 of 94 posts
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#12E.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."
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#13I 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.”
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…
5min games are up to 10min long - 5min for each player
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#14That was a nice read. It felt like I was taking a stroll through a New York city park.
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#15I 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
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#16I 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…
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,…
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.
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#17E.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."
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Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#18I 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…
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.
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#19I 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.
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#20How's this tax free?
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?