Business

Chess Fans are Paying to Play

The day Walter DeLoatch and Myles Savage met inside Chess Forum, they readily discovered what they had in common: A desire to hone their chess skills, and to avoid the chess players who regularly compete in nearby Washington Square Park.

To DeLoatch and Savage, the park players seemed more concerned about hustling for dollars than playing for the sheer pleasure of the contest.

“First, they would play you for a few dollars, let you win, then kill you for hundreds of dollars,” said DeLoatch, 49, referring to the park’s chess players. “I used to play for a few small stakes, but occasionally you would get into an argument about money, and that took the joy out of the game for me.”

Two blocks away from the chess shop, which is on Thompson Street, the guys in Washington Square Park don’t seem willing to answer questions about their strategy or the allegations about their brand of commerce.

“I can’t tell you because I’m not a snitch,” said one of the park players, responding to this reporter’s question about his strategies for competing against other chess enthusiasts in the park.

“… I will talk to you for 20 dollars,” he told this reporter.

After that, the man approached other players in the park, talking and looking in this reporter’s direction.

Three other men also said they didn’t want to be interviewed.

“It beats begging,” Imad Khachan, 48, owner of the Chess Forum, said of the park players. Khachan chargers players who venture into his shop to play.

Even if he doesn’t agree with how they make their money, Khachan said he understands the park players’ practical need to earn it.

Khachan said he also knows how the park players operate. “They look at kids, young and naive [people], and think they will take advantage,” Khachan said. If the naive player happens to win, the park players sometimes get upset, he added.

Khachan continued: “If you lose, expect to pay up. If you win, you don’t get paid.”

The Chess Forum’s hourly rate for its adult players is $5; and $1 per hour for adults over 60. Kids under 18 play for free.

Newfound Chess Forum patron Savage, lead singer of The Platters, a doo-wop group, said he’d rather spend his chess dollars inside Khachan’s shop than in the park.

“I thought that since I would be paying the same thing here anyway,” Savage said, “I might as well enjoy it.”