A couple of times a year, I like to break out of the same old routine at our local club in the suburbs and venture into the city to play with the big boys at the Marshall Chess Club.

Anybody who aspires to be a chess player should get out to the Marshall at least once in their careers.  For one thing, the place just oozes history.  Located at 23 West 10th street in the heart of The Village, the club looks like any other multi-million dollar NY brownstone!  In fact, it’s very easy to walk right by without even realizing you have arrived. The neighborhood is full of interesting sights like the local clock tower and also has numerous restaurants nearby if you wish to grab a snack between rounds.

December 26th, a rainy Saturday afternoon was the ideal time to drive down and spend a day at the club.  The unique thing about the open events is that you are guaranteed to see an interesting collection of players of various strengths.  I was expecting a smaller crowd, but was surprised to see that 53 players entered the event.  Many top players were in attendence and I drew the strongest player, Yury Lapshun (rated 2520) in the first round.  That is, he was my “opponent” in the first round – I would have a better chance of hitting a double off of Mariano Rivera than obtaining a draw against a player of that strength!

In any case, I was glad that I attended the event.

The best story of the day however, had nothing to do with chess, but everything to do with the spirit of competition.  Right in the middle of Round 3, a half-dozen fire fighters marched into the building in full gear making a ruckus  with walkie talkies and loud conversation.  We could hear them talking about an leak and could smell the oily fumes emanating from the furnace.  In the meantime, the firemen were trying to determine if there was a danger to the people in the building and were making goofy comments to me like “play pawn to a4″.

The punchline to the story is that despite all the commotion, not one player decided to get up and leave the building.  I myself was in the middle of a dogfight against an expert player rated 300 points higher than me and I had a significant time advantage to boot.  My only thought was, ”if it’s a small fire, I should still have enough time to complete the match before the flames reach me”!!

I understand that most normal people would leave the building immediately without any prompting, but true chess players are a quirky bunch.  Or as one of our Suffern Chess Club members said to me when I told him the story – “You’re right, you wife will never understand …”