Maurice Ashley - Slaying King George

 

 

Thanks, Jenny. In the summer of 1985, when I was 19 years old, I played one of the most important chess matches of my career. Now, this match is not found in any history books, nor are there any living witnesses to the events that transpired that day. But this match proved to be a defining moment in my life as a chess player, teacher, and commentator. Now, I'm from Brooklyn, New York. [applause] That's what's up. More specifically, though, Brownsville, Brooklyn. [audience laughter] Somebody from Brownsville? Wow.

 

Now, Brownsville wasn't a fairytale place to grow up. I mean, we had our share of abandoned buildings and gaggle of prostitutes and brazen car thieves and our drug dealers who would play musical gunshots every single night to remind you who was in charge of the neighborhood. Kind of like here at Martha's Vineyard. [audience laughter] Mike Tyson, the boxer, he grew up in Brownsville. Brownsville was so rough, Mike had to get out of Brownsville. But lucky for me, I had found and fallen in love with the game of chess. And I played it every single day. I studied chess books whenever I could, and I played with my friends. It was my altar in Brownsville that I had this game. 

 

And one of my friends, I was beaten on and he got upset and he said, “Well, I know a bunch of guys who could crush you.” Now, I'm from Brownsville. Two strangers meet from Brownsville, and one will say, “You from Brownsville.” The other will say, “Never ran, never will.” So, I said, “Bring it. Who are these guys?” And he said, “Well, they're known as the Black Bear School.” The Black Bear School. So, it's like picturing some peace pipes, smoking, brothers watching too many cowboy movies. So, “Well, let's go, let's see it.”

 

So, he takes me to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and I see one of the most intense scenes. It's like 30 African Americans, soul music blasting, and they're all-around chessboards, either playing or watching. And I come up and it's these legends I hear off the park. William Morrison, the exterminator, who plays in the style of Bobby Fischer. I mean, you make one mistake and he finds the flaw in your game, and he'll inject venom in you that no medication can fix. [audience laughter] 

 

But the most interesting guy that they pointed out to me was George Golden, the fire breather. Now, George had a way about him. He was about 5’ 7”, 5’, 8”. He was in his mid-30s. He had a little reddish hair, freckles. But George, when you saw him play, you knew he was a player immediately. The way he moved his pieces. He'd move the piece and it end up exactly in the center of the square every single time. And George had this great skill that you had to have in Brooklyn was, he was a great trash talker. Because, brothers, when we get together, we got a trash talk. But in chess, there's a code of silence. You're not supposed to speak during the game. Button up, Correct. No distracting your opponent. 

 

So, the great trash talkers had to have a way of getting around that code, of circumventing it. And the best people will tell you there are three ways to do that. Number one, start by talking to yourself. [audience laughter] So, you'll be sitting there, you'll be like, “Okay, I could play Bishop g5, and he could play Knight f6. And if I take on f6, takes back, what am I supposed to do? This is confusing, man.” So, now they think either you're slow or you're crazy. And then the second thing you do is you start complimenting them in these crazy rants. So, you'll be like, “Okay, Bishop g5. And he plays Knight f6. And then I play Knight c3, plays Knight Bd7. And if I take on d5, he can take back on d5. When I take his queen, he plays Bishop b4. Check. Oh, this guy is good.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, now they're feeling good about themselves. And then the last point of the trap is you get them to talk. So, you'll say something like, “Man, you're pretty good. Where you from? Which grandmaster taught you.” And if they answer the question, it's over, the door is open and you can trash talk all night. Now, different trash talkers have different styles. Some guys will quote Shakespeare, “Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse to thy name” checkmate [beep]. [audience laughter] Other guys will have some mantra that they say over and over. Like Ralph Malph, who used to always say, “That's what she said.” And you'll say, “What does that mean?” “That's what she said.” “That doesn't make any sense.” “That's what she said.” You're an idiot. “That's what she said.” [audience laughter] 

 

But George was different. George wanted to make sure that you understood that there was a mental chasm between you and him. That on the chessboard, there was a Grand Canyon in between you and him that you could not stand on. So, George, we get super intellectual. He starts quoting chess books. But not just any chess books. The encyclopedias of chess openings, a five-volume set, 500 pages each. And he'd say things like, “Well, don't you know this is in the middle of the game, that this is the carol. This is the Panov–Botvinnik variation of the Caro Kann. This is code B14. And in this position, you're supposed to play a3 so you can keep your light squared bishop. I mean, that's basic. [audience laughter] 

 

And you're like wondering if he's just jiving you. But when you checked, he never was. And then in the middle of that, he'd be singing James Brown. And then he'd be decrying the return of Reaganomics and then he'd say something really crazy like, “Don't you like the way my rook is penetrating into the rear of your position through the hole created by your separated pawns?” [audience laughter] And now you're so flustered, right, that you, like, blunder. And he realizes, he's like, “Whoa.” And then he does his signature move where he gets up on the park bench so that everybody can see him, and he has his queen in his hand and he jumps into the air like Michael Jordan and slam dunks his queen on the square and says, “Checkmate.” I wanted to beat George. I wanted to be George.

 

But it wasn't easy to beat these guys. The Black Bear schools, they studied chess like rabbinical students study the Torah. These guys, their quote, and I later found out, was the reason why it was called the Black Bear school was because when you saw a black bear in the forest, it wasn't enough to injure it, you had to kill it, because it would just keep on coming and so I'd play these guys, and they just beat me and whoop me this way and send me home and I'd study and I'd come back, and they'd beat me again. And I'd come back and I'd study some more, and I'd and come and I get crushed. And I started looking for a weakness. “How am I going to beat these guys?” And after a while, I started to understand it. I started to see it.

 

And what I noticed was that they liked to beat each other and study for each other's games. So, they became very provincial, playing the same openings over and over again. But they didn't like to go out into the chess clubs, the Manhattan Chess Club, the Marshall Chess Club, where everybody was in suits and ties, and you saw the grandmasters come and international masters come and play. They just didn't like that vibe. But that's where the serious chess was. Because they also just like to play blitz. The difference between blitz and classic chess-- I don't know if you've ever seen a chess clock, it has two faces on it, and you have a certain amount of time, and you press the clock and your time starts, and the other person's time starts, and you keep on moving like this. 

 

Well, in classical chess, you'll have four hours to play for 40 moves and in the old days, you'd play for four hours, and then you'd adjourn the game. You get to go home and look at the position, and then you'd come back and both of you already studied all these niceties, and you play for another four hours. So, games could last a couple of days easy. No, in blitz, you each have five minutes. And while in classical chess there's a premium on focus, concentration, and stamina. In blitz, it's all about instinct and skill and hand speed, and hand speed like Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands, where they're like, throwing moves at you like this, and it's going choo, choo, choo and they're cutting you up to pieces.

 

So, those guys played blitz. So, I had to go to the other clubs and play with the grandmasters, the international masters, and toughen up my game and get that strength and precision. And then I came back and I started playing them and I started beating them, beating one at a time until one of them said, “You're ready for George.” [audience laughter] And of course, when George heard that, it was all fire and brimstone. So, the match was set. He invited me to his apartment, and I go in and he's just on fire. You can feel the tension in his shoulders. And he's like, “He's got to take this young kid down.” So, we sit down and the clock is set, and we start to play. And the games are even. The first, we're going back and forth, hitting one each other game. But George is realizing this is not as easy as it was. And I'm realizing, “Wait a second. All that training has worked, and I'm starting to feel it.” And we're going back and forth. I hit him in one particular game. We're going down to the wire, the only seconds on the clock. And I hit him with this combination, and I chased his king, and I checkmate him. And he didn't like it. [audience chuckle]

 

And we set up the pieces, and we start to play again. And then it comes a moment in the game where George reaches for a piece, and his hand is hovering over the piece, and it's trembling. And I know I got him. And I become like Neo in The Matrix. His bullets, I don't have to dodge them anymore. And the thoughts are coming from my head down to my body, into my hand, to my fingertips, to the chest, pieces to the clock in one delicious blur. And I'm just hitting with combination after combination and I'm checkmating his king on the left, and I'm hitting his queen on the right. And George starts to realize that he's got nothing for me. And I'm inside his head. I'm anticipating all his moves. And finally, he's breathless, on his knees, like, out of it completely. And he says, “We're done. And it's over.” And I'm floating on air. I just defeated the fire breather. I killed a black bear.

 

So, I start walking out of the apartment. I look over my shoulder, and I see George is averting my eyes as the door closes behind me. And I realize in that moment that I've broken something inside of George. So, a few years later, George got really sick and he passed away and a friend of ours in the Black Bear School said to me, “George told me something before he went away and that is that I should take care of Maurice, because he's going to be special.” And so to the Black Bear School, who taught me the greatest lessons for the cutthroat world of competitive chess, who taught me that determination and fire get you far, and that the will to win is greater than any material disadvantage, I want to say to them all, the Black Bear School, and to George, thank you.