On the east face of Dupont Circle in rush hour, as the sun sets down P Street, kings and queendoms are falling.
Tom Murphy - rakish yet stately in his cap, red button-down shirt, khaki jacket and moccasins - boxes his king into a corner with his castle, pawn and bishop. Michael Jordan - the chess nut, not the basketball star - is on the offense. It's speed chess, and both men's quick moves overlap each other, and the pieces move as if animated.
"I'm trying to figure out what the fuck is going on," Murphy says, agitated and excited, as his opponent's white forces advance square by square despite his maneuverings. "I think I'm missing something."
The volume and intensity of this game is both genuine and farcical. Both men surrender to the thrall of the game, but as soon as the five minutes are up, they look up at the spectators who have gathered en masse, and they laugh. It is, after all, a beautiful day to be alive and playing chess.
If Dupont Circle is the heart of D.C., then the chess crowd is that mysterious force keeping it pumping. Ten stone tables follow the circle's gentle curve. At them sit retirees and college students, lawyers and doctors, bums and transients, locals and foreigners, disguised grandmasters and brazen amateurs, regulars and curious tourists. Each fights a battle of wit and intellect. Passersby and players settle around a game like at a campfire, and move on to another if the level of excitement and banter begins to dwindle.
This dynamic, a convergence of personalities and skill, defines the sunrise side of Dupont Circle. It's been this way since 1968, when the tables were installed and the city's chess community began to coagulate.
William the Checkerman, as he calls himself, was there at the start. People have come and gone since then, but the tables are still the same.
"Most of us are good," said William, sitting on a bench across from the tables. "Most of us are masters. And we decided to teach people chess, and when they leave here, they know chess."
A retired postal worker from Philadelphia, William stops by the circle about twice a week. He enjoys a good chess game, but his passion is Level 3 Checkers - an amplified version of the garden-variety game. In fact, he makes his own checkerboards out of plywood and is looking to start a business. At the same time, the Dupont chess masters are pushing politicians to bring chess into the playgrounds of Washington. Teenagers need mental recreation, William insists, especially with modern-day distractions.
"You can apply [chess] to anything in life," William said. "You can apply it to business, as the leader of a country, to sports."
Until chess tables find their way into playgrounds, potential students can always sidle up to an open seat in Dupont. While the section of the circle has no official name, the regulars call it Chess University. Keeping a benevolent watch over "classes" is James Taylor - the chess guru, not the singer - who drifts from game to game, eying each match like a conscientious dean of students.
Taylor, 57, started playing chess in the 1960s in Richmond, Va. He adopted the nickname "Black Knight" because none of the chess books he read as a teenager featured African-American players. He moved to D.C. in 1981 and that year became the first African-American to win the D.C. Amateur Chess Championship. Last year, with financial help from an area law firm, he started Chess University International, a roving entity whose goals are to teach the game to at-risk children, the blind and handicapped.
A retired marine and winner of a Bronze Star in the Vietnam War, Taylor's syllabus is simple yet requires discipline: "Every day - rain, snow, sleet or shine - chess at all times." When the weather is bad, the die-hards move inside to Books a Million across the circle.
But as much as Taylor does it for recreation and competition, chess is more than just a game.
"It's not just chess," said Taylor in his quiet, distant voice, stroking his salt-and-pepper goatee. "If you talk to a grandmaster, they'll tell you, you have to be spiritually, morally and mentally right. A lot of people play chess to be perfect, but it teaches humility."
Taylor also loves the unifying ability of chess. The Dupont Circle crowd has been featured on the Travel Channel and is as reputable a public location in the chess world as New York City's Washington Square. Consequently, the circle serves as a magnet for foreigners who are passing through.
Murphy and William have played skillful players from Beijing and many African countries. Mike Hillegas, a physician's assistant who stops by while biking home from work, played someone visiting from Russia recently.
"It's very diversified," Hillegas said. "The outstanding thing about it is that there's so many interesting people. And it's fun."
Spectators react to moves with the fervor of a football crowd, and their volume is matched by benign trash-talking from the players themselves.
Hillegas watched and provided colorful commentary as Malte Lehming blazed through a heated game of speed chess. Lehming, the Washington Bureau chief of the Berlin-based newspaper Der Taggespiegel, often pops over to Dupont during the early afternoon after he files his stories.
"It's a very mixed culture as far as I see," said Lehming, 44, after winning 12 consecutive matches in a round robin with two strangers. "It's very friendly, very open. There are some very competitive players, and then you have Mike."
The German journalist and the American medical professional share a laugh before agreeing to settle the insult on the chess board.
Murphy - the one who was brutally resisting Michael Jordan's all-out attack earlier - takes a break from about two hours of constant play to join Mike and Malte in the witty back-and-forth that is characteristic of Chess University regulars.
Murphy, an environmental issues lobbyist for the Public Research Interest Group, moved to Columbia Heights from Wilmington, N.C., six years ago. He is the Arlington Chess Blitz Champion and won prize money at Philadelphia's World Open in July. Whenever he has free time, he enters East Coast competitions, but he never wanders far from his home campus, where those thirsty for a little mental exercise and good humor enroll for a couple hours of sun-drenched pawn-pushing.
"This is where the D.C. chess action is," Murphy says. "This is the pulse of D.C, the same way New York City has the Village. This is part of our liberal culture"
