I work in Manchester, just down the road from the Arndale shopping centre. Part of the centre crosses Market Street, so there's a large sheltered area there. You often get buskers and the like there. There's a wicked blind guitarist who plays there sometimes, people do dancing of various forms - George Samson used to dance there, and sometimes people do chalk art on the floor or sell pictures.
One day last week, I was walking past, and saw a small crowd of people watching something. I found a space to watch, and saw a black guy with dreadlocks playing speed chess against a twenty-ish girl, while a very tired looking Ipod dock blasted out Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise. The chap played very quickly and very well from what I could judge, and dispatched his female opponent with ease. He shook her hand and then asked for another volunteer from the audience to play. The crowd started to dissipate, while others taunted their friends to take him on. I looked around at his signs that he'd placed on the floor, which proclaimed him the "Jamaican speed chess champion" who needed to collect money to fly home to see his dying father. Still, the man was asking for a volunteer, with no one brave enough to step up to the proverbial plate.
I sat down with him.
He shook my hand and introduced himself as Pablo. I told him my name, and conceded ahead of time that he would destroy me, as I'd not played for years. We arranged the pieces on the board, he reset the clocks, and flicked the Ipod to playing Killing Me Softly by The Fugees. Game on... I opened the best way I could remember, and he countered with ease. The crowd built around us, as I made mistake after mistake. I dithered over moves, while his hand shot to his pieces before I'd even let go of mine, and we hit mercilessly at the clock at our side. With his queen on my back row, and my king pinned behind a solitary pawn, I conceded checkmate. He had torn me apart in a matter of moments. The crowd applauded. I got up, threw a pound in his collection box, and wandered off to catch my train home, glad of the opportunities that one can find in the cities from time to time.
That evening, I decided to take a look on Google for this mysteriously stranded Jamaican chess champion. So, a search for "Jamaican speed chess pablo" reveals... That
he's a fraud. Several sites on Google report him as running his little scam in London, Glasgow, Cardiff, as well as Montreal, Perth (Australia, that is), Tokyo, etc. Always claiming he needs to get back to Jamaica in the next ten days, to see this father of his. In the past he's charged for games, though on the occasion I saw him he was just accepting donations. Either way, I had been had. I'd been hustled out of a pound by a phoney. Even at the time I wondered how a champion of his calibre could fall on such hard times that he'd have to resort to this to get home, but I was clearly taken in by his charisma and the quality of his chess. I had fallen for it.
The strange thing is, I am not angry with him for "stealing" money from me; rather I feel I have been robbed of an experience. My memory of playing chess with a Jamaican champion on the streets of Manchester in front a crowd of people is a lie. We may have played chess in front a crowd, sure, but the reason for doing so was a fabrication, a get rich quick scheme for a lazy chess player. I had believed him. I had wanted to experience something as unusual as playing chess with a champion who had fallen on hard times and was using his skills to solve his problems the only way he could. In those fleeting minutes I had played chess with a brilliant man, while people looked on in wonder... Except I hadn't.
I am reminded, in some ways, of the conclusion of Yann Martel's book, The Life of Pi, which I would recommend to anyone with eyes in their head to read it. If you've not and you intend to, look away now, before I discuss the ending... The end of the book concerns the eponymous Pi's claim that the preceding story is entirely true, while the sceptical parties to whom he has related it, disbelieve and say it is a pack of lies. Pi tells them that they are free to believe what they prefer to believe - if they have the faith, they may believe the improbable story that he has recounted, or they may believe their stripped down, straightforward interpretation. The choice is theirs, to believe what they want. In that sense, I find that I prefer to believe the fantastical account of my chess foe, even if the facts clearly show him to be a fraudster. I would like to believe that his story was true, that he really was the Jamaican speed chess champion, struggling for money to fly home to his ailing father. Never mind that I have since found the name of the true champion, and Pablo it is not, or that he has been playing this game in any city he finds himself in, and by extension flying the world on his victim's money... None of this is important. What matters it that for about 3 minutes, I played chess with a champion, was deservedly beaten, and gave him some money to aid him on his noble quest to see his father before he died.
Or perhaps I never met him, but merely happened on his story and chose to write about this...
