Bwog correspondent Coogan Brennan caught up with chess legend Garry Kasparaov in Harlem this afternoon.

United Civil Front leader and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov made an appearance at the Harlem Children’s Zone today starting at around 2 PM. Kasparov is the fifteen-year reigning chess champion who also currently holds the highest ranking of any living chess player anywhere in the world. Children’s Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada introduced Kasparov, referring him as “an individual who led the fight against the autocratic regime of former President Vladimir Putin.”

The gymnasium at Promise Academy was packed with chess boards, clocks and players, all of which were encircled by enraptured onlookers. A hearty-looking senior man challenged your Bwog correspondent to a blitz match in the midst of the mayhem. Feigning intrigue and intelligence, your correspondent managed to seem like a master for the first eight moves. Later, the senior man walloped him on the diagonals, resulting in a sound endgame for your correspondent’s opponent.

Mr. Kasparov strolled in about two-thirds of the way through the program, at which point players were told to abandon their boards and stop all games. After Canada’s introduction, Mr. Kasparov entered into a circle surrounded by twenty boards and hundreds of onlookers. Obsessively making sure each piece was in its place, Mr. Kasparov began by arranging the pieces, shaking his opponents’ hand — sometimes the opponent had to stand up due to his diminutive stature — and playing either a King’s Gambit or Queen’s Gambit, alternating with each opponent. 

Once the crowd caught on to the trick, it wasn’t long before people began to move out of the gym and into miserable weather, preferring to perfect their own games by playing each other rather than watching a world grandmaster.