Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
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Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
1–10 of 94 posts
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#2I 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 avoiding life.
However, there were plenty of positive things I learned from chess, like thinking ahead, being able to concentrate in distracting environments, and having lots of patience.
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#3How's this tax free?
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#4This is great, thanks for sharing. I've always walked by these guys but never expected that the roots ran so deep. I also love this little bit near the end: "To me, the Bible is Basic Information Before Leaving Earth—B.I.B.L.E."
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#5How's this tax free?
I guess he meant "tax free" as in "cash only" - not something I'd want to say in public, but what are the chances IRS will pursue these guys.
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#6I 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.”
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#7How's this tax free?
Cash under the chess board.
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#8This is great, thanks for sharing. I've always walked by these guys but never expected that the roots ran so deep. I also love this little bit near the end: "To me, the Bible is Basic Information Before Leaving Earth—B.I.B.L.E."
Not sure if this is the genesis of that acronym but that is a song on GZA's classic album Liquid Swords [0]. Interestingly, the album cover [1] and lyrics include chess references throughout.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Swords#Track_listing
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/GZALiquidSwor...
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#9I 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 non-teaching games). Although I suspect he'd be willing to negotiate to the same 40/hr to play 12x timed 5min games if someone asked.
Re: Life advice from NYC chess hustlers
#10I 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, but it's actually an important one because it eliminates the notion that someone has to be of above-average intelligence and discover new moves on the fly to succeed.
In actuality, that skill of pattern recognition can be practiced, honed, and applied in numerous areas of life. Playing chess is such a pure form of the skill that it opened my eyes to how many other activities can benefit from a similar approach.