 |
| Dr Ginsburg at 55th Street Location |
It was at the Manhattan Chess Club that I played in the rapids against player such as GM Joel Benjamin, GM Max Dlugy, GM William Lombardy. I've played one-on-one bughouse against GM Michael Rohde. I have lived!
In the election where Fan Adams took over, proxies were allowed. Strangely enough, I controlled the largest number of proxies, and I voted for him. I was told that he would be good for the club because he was rich and generous. I was fooled once. Some people are fooled over and over.
First let me say that Adams did a good thing founding Chess in the Schools. Of course kids need to learn to read and do math more than anything, and that isn't going to happen as long as those activities are portrayed as punishments. Kids need instruction that is fresh and lively as opposed to cold, dead, hated, over managed, and over centralized. They need constructive afterschool activities for the time after school when their parents are still at work.
 |
| Manager Jeff Kastner, Future GM Joel Benjamin, President Moses Mitchell |
Such people think that every organization should be a hierarchy, where there is a boss on top, his minions, and then everyone else. There are other kinds of organizations that can work like this, but not a chess club. People go to a chess club to relax, not to be bossed around or patronized. | |
| NM Eric Cooke, 2002 Club Champion |
I was on the board there briefly. We did have financials, and it seems to me that the club was close to a state where it could have survived at Carnegie Hall or a similar location. Instead of trying to figure out how to make ends meet, the board's main activity seemed to be banning people, to show everyone who the bosses were. By moving to 46th Street, the club became subject to mortgage payments above its means, which ensured that Fan and his ilk would remain in control.
 |
| Mike Hehir vs OLM Larry Tarmakin |
The Marshall also did better than the
Manhattan not because we had better employees. It was because the board respected the expertise of people like Steve Immitt, Sophia Rohde, and Ron Young. The people who knew about chess were not second guessed and degraded.
The Manhattan eventually because a 501(c)(3). This seems to be quite illegal, as a membership club is owned by its members and the 501(c)(3) is owned by the public, so there was a conversion of equity involved.
People like Adams don't understand a membership club, unless perhaps the other members are all like him.
 |
| Lewis Cullman |
omic status. We are always helping each other, and we are a community. Charity is different, much like hero-worship. Charity is more like we're great and you're small. We'll do something for you, but at the end of the day, we're still great and you're still small. We have community and you don't because we control you. We have you standing there with your hand out and your nose you-know-where.
At 46th Street there was the Cullman Room, which was supposed to be used by major donors and grandmasters, but it was seldom if ever used. Donors of this type don't go to a chess club to play each other. They go to a chess club to feel better than someone. Of course grandmasters have patrons, but they are not going to be seen hawking their services like a hooker on the street.
Not sure why it was necessary to attack somebody who can't defend themselves (because they're dead) decades after the fact, especially without providing some hard and fast details. My experience with Fan Adams was through some correspondence games we played in the mid-80s, and he showed he had two sides to him, which most people do. He did object to an if-move I sent him that suggested he would play in a highly sub-optimal manner (I just missed it in my original analysis). I might go away from that thinking he was a jerk, but on the other hand, when a clear win was slipping away from me, he resigned because I guess he thought I deserved it based on my prior play. This latter doesn't sound much like the man portrayed in this blog post, and I'm not necessarily suggesting the portrayal is completely flawed, but rather that there are two sides to every story, and many sides to every person.
ReplyDeleteI remember going to the Manhattan Chess Club as a little girl with a group of kids from my local library. I was selected to go to the summer program because I was one of the best at the time.
ReplyDeleteI will never forget playing against this grand master, around 1996-97 (?) a Puerto Rican guy, who scuffed at my moves and basically be littled me. I was super nervous as a child playing against a grand master, so I used the same opening as everyone else. He respected them, even though we were all children looking at each others boards, but not me. I remember leaving in tears, and they called me back the next day and placed in a lower rating group. I wish I had the words as a child to let them know what a piece of shit that guy was, picking on the only little girl in the room.
I still play chess to this day, but unfortunately I still witness attitudes like that grandmaster and the Manhattan Chess club who don't understand that chess is for everyone.