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Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

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Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#51

Post by SeanLuke »

I used to play Chinese Chess on and off in Hong Kong. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi). Just has NY has chess hustlers in parks, Hong Kong has Chinese Chess hustlers in parks. The hustlers were always excited to see me, a white American, stopping by and asking for a game and some tips: I was fresh meat! They'd gather in big groups to watch the sucker. But after my first move (the "P-K4" of Chinese Chess: Canon to beneath the center Pawn) their faces would change radically, as it suddenly became obvious that I knew somewhat how to play. :-)

Now while Chess strategy transfers reasonably well to Chinese Chess, I'm not particularly good, and certainly not better than the hustlers. But I'd often beat them because they couldn't get it out of their heads that they weren't playing an American patsy, and so they kept making showy moves rather than good ones. It was a lot of fun.

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#52

Post by nojs »

> And let me tell you something. People make mistakes early in their life. I made mistakes early in my life. I got locked up when I was living in Maryland, selling drugs and stuff. But that doesn't mean that the game was over. That's how I equate chess with life.

Maybe true in life, but not really true in chess. If you blunder early against a decent player, your chances of winning are very low!

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#53

Post by georgeoliver »

saucymew wrote: post #48

I’ve played in the NY parks, Marcel is the best player of the bunch interviewed here. Sadly, after COVID most of the Bryant/Union Sq games seem to have disappeared. It’s mostly Washington Sq now. But there’s this one guy who comes and goes. Always wears these dapper, beautiful robes, and plays up to $100/game. I’ve yet to work myself up to step up to play him… Can’t wait to visit the park games next time.

There were a half dozen or so tables in Union Square a week ago. Bryant unfortunately wasn't happening, though I noticed the chairs on that side of the park were chained up, so maybe they haven't opened it yet.

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#54

Post by pmoriarty »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #45
pmoriarty wrote: post #2

I 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…

"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." - Paul Morphy There’s absolutely no limit to the amount of time your could spend getting better at chess. I personally lost interest due to the excessive levels of memorisation involved, which was also one of Fischer’s main complaints about the game.

"I personally lost interest due to the excessive levels of memorisation involved"

You could play Fischer Random Chess (aka Chess360), which relieves players of the need to memorize openings, as there are way too many opening positions to make memorization practical.

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#55

Post by leephillips »

rhexs wrote: post #20
wdb wrote: post #3

How'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?

I don’t know about the guy who was quoted, but I think that some people who are accustomed to normal jobs with tax withholding are actually unaware that they are obligated to pay taxes on cash income. For many people the only purpose in filing a tax return is to get a refund, as most people with normal jobs are victims of over-withholding.

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#56

Post by paulcole »

jamiek88 wrote: post #39
paulcole wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it’s just 100% memorization. The French champion doesn’t even speak French for example.

Don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it’s definitely not 100% memorization. You have to know the words and which one to play. The “right” one to play is usually obvious, but on 2-4 turns per game, the strategy becomes very very very important.

With perfect word knowledge and garbage strategy you could probably be around the 25-50th best human player and with a fair bit of luck, would win some big tournaments eventually.

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#57

Post by riotnrrd »

mi100hael wrote: post #10
pmoriarty wrote: post #2

I 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,…

That's a well-known aspect of "expert" level chess player thinking! There's a famous experiment that demonstrated this. Researchers briefly showed set-up chess boards to novices (little to no chess experience) and expert players (2000+ ELO) and then asked the players to recreate the board they just saw. If the set-up was from a real game (not necessarily a famous or studied game) experts performed far, far better. However, if the chess board was just a random scramble of pieces, novices and experts had the same recall ability. Essentially, expert players saw the patterns at work in legitimate mid-game set-ups and this helped the recall task.

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#58

Post by notch656a »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #33
rhexs wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

And yet the poor get audited more than the rich ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-li...

A large portion of that auditing is fraud/error involved in earned income tax credits, where you get paid special credits to make less money. Also for various reasons, being poor can often go hand in hand with being both unable to file a return in a way that looks correct and being unable to hire a professional to do it on your behalf.

There is an incentive to look poor even if you are not so poor, when filing taxes. It's those who file as poor who aren't so poor, not those who are as poor as they say, that are the more likely culprit of these audits.

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#59

Post by WalterBright »

I would play chess against my mom as a kid. She'd read a book while playing. I'd spend a long time considering my next move, and she'd just look away from her book for a moment for hers.

She always won handily :-)

Much later, it occurred to me to wonder what her chess playing past was, but by then it was too late.

Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers

#60

Post by dmurray »

btilly wrote: post #19

I 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…

But this is a draw. Black plays Kg2 on any of the first three moves. I can't tell who's hustling whom in this story because as described, none of the three participants can be far above beginners.

Maybe the Black king was on e4 and the story would work?

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