
Zany Stories from the Late, Great Manhattan Chess Club
From 1974 until 1984, the Manhattan Chess Club (MCC) was located at 155 E 55th St. in Manhattan; FM Jeff Kastner, manager of the club during that time, reports that his office was near this old-timey Coke machine:

But then it moved to the grand Carnegie Hall, at 57th Street and 7th Avenue, very close to Central Park, in 1984.
Chess players entered through a side entrance and took an elevator up to the 10th floor. This contrasts to the Marshall Chess Club, a brownstone in Greenwich Village at 23 W 10th St. There, members walk in and can play in a basement/back garden area or go up one flight of stairs to play on the 2nd floor (where Bobby Fischer beat Donald Byrne in the "Game of the Century").
There was another element to the Manhattan Club: an expansive bathroom on the 11th floor featuring a large tiled floor, a hot-water wall radiator, and a bathtub situated in the middle of the room (reachable via a back staircase).
Representative Games
First let's take a look at some sample games. Here is a 1983 battle where I surprised young (19 years old) GM Joel Benjamin in an unusual opening but then missed a winning tactic, entirely botched the middlegame, and suffered in an agonizing endgame. Consulting the timeline, we see that in 1978 Joel won his first club title at 14 years of age.
Did you spot the clear win for black in the Joel game? It occurred after White's 20th move Rc1. Let's take a look.
At this moment, Black has the vicious 20...Qg6!, holding back on f4-f3 for the moment. There are two defenses, 21.Rg1 and 21.h4. The first point is that after 21.Rg1, Black now plays 21...f3! with a fantastic geometry. Various captures lead to a lethal black bishop check on either h3 or d3. Note the latent power of the rook on f8 in these lines once the f-file is cleared.
Can you visualize what to do after the plausible 20...Qg6 21.h4? Then there's the very nice and somewhat different tactic 21...Ne3+! 22. fxe3 fxe3 23. Bf3 Be4! 24, Rg1 (24. Rh3 Qg4!) 24...Rxf3+! 25. exf3 Bd3+ and wins. This illustrates why the black pawn should have stayed on f4.
In fact, the engine gives as best for White now the sad 20...Qg6! 21.Rxc2 with an easy technical win for Black. There is a saying that when a game starts to crumble, it often crumbles to oblivion (paraphrasing a comment GM Boris Gulko made once in his annotations in a win over GM Greg Serper). And that indeed is what happened here. This particular game was even more nightmarish because of course Black was thinking of all the missed opportunities earlier and could have offered much better resistance. Consider the following position that was reached.
It was Black's turn and I dispiritedly played the lemon 56...h5??, losing without a fight after 57.f5. However, if Black plays the knight to d6 here, he has chances to hold, for example 56...Nd6 57.Ke5 Nc4+ and 58...Nxa3. That leaves 56...Nd6 57.Bg5 or White, an attempt to use the bishop to force concessions. In that event, Black has the curious 57...Nf7 and the game goes on. White is undoubtedly better and can press, but Black has resources too.
Also in 1983, I faced a very young Jon Schroer who would go on to become an international master. Before this game I had faced him in a World Open when he was rated only 1808 and he made a draw, so I was on notice.
In 1985, I battled a player who was prominent mid-century, George Mortimer Kramer, who only passed last year at the age of 94. Kramer scored +1 in the 1946 U.S. Championship when he was only 17 years old, and professionally had a PhD in chemistry.
During the game, I had no idea about Kramer's exploits earlier in the century!
Also in 1985 I battled another chemist, City College of New York's Dr. Neil McKelvie (who also happened to be club president), and this snappy attacking game won a best game prize.
I don't want to get too far ahead of a motif discussed later, but McKelvie played a role in a hunger incident at the club. He was giving a speech at a lectern and there was a great commotion in the rear of the club. A member was trying to place the buffet turkey into a Hefty Bag in order to flee the premises with many meals in tow! The absconding did not take place as the general outrage derailed the scheme.
And here is a game from 1989 where young future GM Maurice Ashley showed exceptional defensive skills to hold a very difficult game. White's "reversed Rat" Modern Defense reverse greatly confused Maurice, but I couldn't quite organize a killing blow.
I remember being greatly frustrated, as time and again Maurice appeared to be teetering on the verge of the knockout, but I couldn't quite get the job done. Of course, missing a clear win on move 15 did not help! The missed win on move 30 was much more difficult and problem-like.
In 1988 and 1990 I managed to win the Manhattan Club Championship ahead of such luminaries as IM Kamran Shirazi, IM Bernard Zuckerman, and the late IM Walter Shipman.
Shirazi, a self-proclaimed chess "artiste", and the cold rational Zuckerman were diametric opposites in terms of personality. Shirazi would pontificate that he was interested in creating art (imagine some wavy hand motions to go along with this). After a half minute of the art talk, Zuckerman would cut him off with, "I have no idea what you are talking about."
Zuckerman was quite the character, often arriving 57 or 58 minutes late leaving just minutes before a forfeit, then banging out theoretical moves culminating in a draw offer. The various doors of the club leading into the playing area could be heard opening and closing loudly. My nervous system could not stand up to this, and in a symmetrical English Opening, where Zuckerman banged out a Botvinnik system as Black to more or less equalize, in fact I couldn't stand it anymore and took a draw.
In 1989 I did not win the event but had an interesting up and down battle vs future GM Michael Rohde.
This game is included to show Rohde's dynamic style. His superior understanding of the opening created a winning game, but time pressure misses on moves 29, 35, and 38 gave White a lucky escape.
Parallels to the Netflix show The Queen's Gambit
The club had a curious mix of aristocrats, academics, and scruffy vagrants, much like the supporting characters in The Queen's Gambit TV show. However, these income-challenged scruffies did not have decent apartments such as the "analysis apartment" in the show. Common themes were hunger, a lack of money, and needing a place to crash for various reasons. Some of the non-aristocratic members actually started using the 11th floor bathroom as a sleeping area, which was not cool with Carnegie Hall management when they found out.
Pursuing the theme of hunger and desperate straits, there was a mediocre deli across the street named Merit Farms. Steve Immitt, a tournament director, called the people who worked there "Merit Clowns." It was not uncommon for a player to purchase a modest tuna fish sandwich from Merit Farms, eat half of it, then try to sell the remainder in the club's analysis room!
I am not sure if the show emphasized enough the themes of low income and hunger among the lesser lights (the guys that were helping her analyze when a key game was adjourned). Fighting over a tuna fish sandwich during the analysis would have been on point. What did the 1980s not have? Mobile devices for analysis, income, streaming, or opportunity. What did we have? Decaying, graffiti-ridden subway cars with broken PA systems, sixty cent tokens (outrage ensued when it went to 75 cents and then 90 cents), a large but seedy Washington Heights apartment, and an "A" train to go from the apartment to the club which became a dismal "C" local after hours.
Signs of the Times: 1980s Zeitgeist
Casting the net a bit wider than the club itself, here are a few selected photos from the 1980s to give some context for these players. Any of these fellows might have spotted in the club's hallowed halls.




What happened to the Manhattan Chess Club?
In the 1990s, the club moved to Restaurant Row (far west site, W 46th street) and entered a death spiral of declining membership. A fantastic oil painting of Emanuel Lasker was purchased by a wealthy collector after the club went bankrupt in 2002 and moved into a private home, thus unviewable anymore except for a select few. This is a great pity, I still hold out hope it could be put "on loan" to a club such as St Louis (for example) for all to admire.
For Further Reading
Nicholas W. Conticello put together an extremely interesting MCC abridged timeline and it's viewable here. Taking a look at the timeline answers the trivial question, "Did Frank Marshall ever win the Manhattan Club Championship?" Yes he did, three times! So it's Frank 3 - MG 2.
Trivia Corner
How well do you know your 1980s?
1. In 1985 I enrolled in a Columbia U computer programming certificate program to try to become hirable, on the advice of a fellow IM who had already done it. Who was this IM?
2. What NYC mayor's photo-op went wrong when he choked on food?
3. What subway train was known as the Burma train?
4. What convict who spent a long time in Leavenworth (he killed a man and his use of himself in court as his own lawyer did not go well) held court at the blitz tables in lower Manhattan? This convict's picture was in Life Magazine, the story was how he learned chess in prison.