Community Economics Lifestyle & Culture

For the love of chess and, sometimes, money

By Sarah Levine

The younger man bounded down the four steps to the basement of a Tenth Street brownstone,  punching a secret password into the keypad. Its green checkmark flashed. The older man opened the door and waved him inside. Four hundred dollars was that Tuesday night’s prize at the Marshall Masters Chess Club.

Somewhere along its 100-year history, the club started offering prize money to players drawn to that spot. Today, it’s a symbol of chess culture that extends throughout New York City, including places like nearby Washington Square Park. 

Some mainly play for money, some for the mental challenge, and some for the chance to socialize.

“It’s definitely a side hustle,” said Kasson Mangin, who has been playing chess since he was a kid. “I make $40 on an average weekday and on weekends it could be $60.” 

He charges $5 for a game and $25 for a 30-minute lesson, the going prices in Washington Square Park, a mecca for hustling chess players. The park is six blocks from Marshall Masters Chess Club. Two weeks ago, Mangin started playing in the west end of that park, at the corner of Washington Square North and Washington Square West. 

Because he is more interested in the game’s intellectual challenge than anything else. He’s so focused on the game that when this reporter asked if he would answer a few questions, initially, he declined. “Time is money,” said  Nahshon Thomas, who charges anyone who wants to challenge him $5.  

“Chess is a game that helps you to condition your mind to be adequate,” he said. “Overthrowing the ideation of your opponent’s mind is like getting power.” 

It’s the social engagement that draws Johnny O’Leary. “It nourishes the soul,” he said.

Among his friends and on social media, he’s known as Johnny Chess. In the spring, summer, fall and bearable days of winter he shows up most days at 10 a.m. in Washington Square Park and leaves at  10 p.m

On a July day, a white tank-top undershirt showed off the tan he gets from sitting in the sun this time of year. After his last game at 10 p.m., an hour-long commute home to the Bronx lies ahead of him, but he stops to tell a quartet of teenagers about his chess-playing and what it has taught him about life.

“In the beginning, I thought it would be [for] the money. But it changed for me–not for everyone, but for me,” O’Leary said. “You could be Bill Gates or Donald Trump or Elon Musk. They ain’t got nothing on me.”

 O’Leary has been profiled on YouTube and the front page of The New York Times, which he laminated. He pulls it from a plastic accordion folder that also holds photos of him in sunglasses or posing with other people. Just memories, he said.

When it’s his turn to make a move, he tends to stare blankly away from the board, cocking his head before advancing. To his opponent, he speaks words and phrases of encouragement: “You won the game when you sat down. If you lose the match, you really are the winner, because you learned something.”