Tales from the grimecore hip hop underground chess club
VEGAS CULTURE PEOPLE are always like, grrr, we want an art museum already – and sure, who doesn't? – but I kinda want a legit chess club first. Same broad civic impetus as an art museum – a site of cultural edification and education that reflects a more aspirant, dignified public will – but a chess club is less expensive, more practical, and much more readily invites community buy-in.
I'm reasonably confident something like this will be built in Las Vegas someday – ooh, almost wishily typed "someday soon" there. Energies seem to be coalescing amid the resurgent popularity of chess as the, what, mindsport (?) continues to thrive in our twitchy age with compelling personalities, zippier game modes (30-second berserk bullet, anyone?), and the absolute, surgically optimized ease of playing and streaming online. Today's speed-chess is a psychic switchblade fight.
Myself, I'm an avid, unimprovable patzer with a notorious penchant for unsound but explosively fun gambits – King's, Danish, Benko, Budapest, Stafford, gimme 'em all – that, admittedly, usually backfire spectacularly. For years I hosted a chess club at a Russian restaurant owned and run by an ex-circus acrobat. (Served killer Chicken Kiev and potent, concussive Baltika porter, and threw wild techno parties for hard-partying Moldovans.) Restaurant closed, COVID happened, and I pushed wood at private hangs with friends. Since then, though, promising sprouts are popping back up, such as the Southern Nevada Chess Club and – the buried lede of this post – the Go Gettahz Chess Club.
Go Gettahz is a monthly chess tournament produced by grimecore rap artist D. McKenzie at Ninja Karaoke downtown. For all its capitulations to the market mandates of modern entertainment – faster games! flashier graphics! – chess is still largely a sensibly silent affair, but Go Gettahz blows that shibboleth up, taking inspiration from phenom such as L.A. Chess Club, mashing in DJs sets and live rap and R&B performances for a raucous chess-intensive turnup. The room is rattling, the lights are raking the walls in strident syncopation, and you're struggling mightily to ward off looming checkmate on c7 by calculating a desperado queen sac. Trying to concentrate amid the party tornado is strangely thrilling. All the barking bluster and hype makes you feel cheered on at stadium levels.
I kicked in $10 to join the tournament Sunday night. Warmed up with some promising matches – in the first, worked a material advantage to grind to an endgame, sailing a flank pawn to queendom in a slo-mo Chariots of Fire finale; in the second, forcing a resignation with an imperious checkmate stormcloud. But I got summarily quashed in the tourney's first round as my opponent John W. put my piece development into a python grip with a closed position, then shattered the kingside with a well-timed pawn break that fatally cost me a rook.
I was out of the tourney – which was eventually won by Eric C., a dean at UNLV – but not out of the game. Amid the big beats and blunt smoke, the crowd always burps up another opponent for a casual match. Ha, that's the one where I was mated on c7, punished by my own misadventures wherein I chased my opponent's pieces right into my king's kill zone. Toppled my king, bumped fists – and vowed for a rematch next month. Maybe Vegas will grow a full-fledged chess center someday but, in all its raw enthusiasm, Go Gettahz is the chess club we need right now. ✦
