Tag Archives: blitzchess

An article by the Washington Post from 2007 that looks into the world of blitz chess and street hustling. It follows Tom Murphy, a well-known chess player that roams Dupont Circle, and his experiences with hustling for dollars to the ups and downs of competing in tournaments to increase his rank in United States Chess Federation.

As endgame approached, Murphy had 18 minutes on his clock. His opponent had two. Murphy had steadily disassembled the boy’s defenses. The game ended with the boy madly shuttling his king toward a corner, while Murphy’s queen closed in on checkmate. The effect was like watching someone seeking shelter on a barren battlefield under machine-gun fire.

The pace in which blitz chess is played is astounding. One has to fully grasp chess theory and strategy to be able to effectively play at that speed. The possibilities from such a small range of spaces and pieces means he’s ten, fifteen, maybe twenty steps ahead of the current situation.

“The first four moves can lead to seventy thousand different positions,” George Steiner wrote in the New Yorker in 1972. “The number of possible ways of playing the first ten moves on each side is such that if every man, woman, and child on the earth played without respite it would require more than two hundred and seventeen billion years to go through them all.” The possible ways of playing an entire game is a much vaster number, 10120, a number considerably larger than the number of electrons in the known universe (1079), according to chess historian David Shenk.