DOWNTOWN — A pair of Chicago chess aficionados are trying to end a quarter-century without a major, central chess club in the city.
"I think we're the first folks in a while to come at this with a real determination and a plan and a vision," said Keith Ammann, president of a nonprofit agency devoted to opening a Chicago Chess Center.
The Lincoln Square resident said the name was an homage to the original Chicago Chess Center, run by Jules Stein from the late '70s to his death in 1989. The center began on Halsted Street in Lincoln Park and moved to 2923 N. Southport Ave. in the mid-'80s, but it couldn't survive his death and another move to Back of the Yards.
Thus the first lesson from that defeat: "If you want it to survive, you have to have a structure," Ammann said. "If you want to have an enduring institution of any kind, it can't just be one person's hobbyhorse."
That's the reason for first organizing the nonprofit, which Ammann and Bill Brock, his partner and treasurer in the venture, did two years ago. They're trying to raise $30,000 "to get the doors open," Ammann said, and they're two-thirds of the way there.
They want it to be Downtown, as all chess players know a strong center is the key to both development and tactics. Ammann pointed to several thriving suburban chess clubs, but added, "There's still a hole in the center, and that's the hole we're seeking to fill."
Ammann called the city's chess scene "a solar system without a sun," and said Chicago was the only major U.S. city, at least among the top 10 in population, not to have a dominant central chess gathering point along the lines of the Marshall Chess Club in New York City, the Boylston Chess Club in Boston and the Mechanics' Institute in San Francisco.
But then comes what Brock, of Edgewater, called the "chicken-and-egg problem."
"It's a lot easier to raise funds when you can actually show someone something rather than tell them about it," Ammann allowed. But they need money to open somewhere, he added, and "you can't find affordable space to rent in this city by the day."
They rejected the idea of being beholden to some agency for charity space, pointing to the Wicker Park Chess Club.
"They met at Myopic Books, and Myopic kicked them out," Ammann said. "Trying to run a club out of a library or a park district is very difficult, almost impossible."
The fate of the original Chicago Chess and Checker Club also served as a cautionary tale. In its 89-year history, starting in 1891, it did a couple of terms at Louis Sullivan's Schiller Building at 64 W. Randolph St., but after it was demolished in 1961 the club moved constantly and gradually "fizzled out," Brock said.
"We want a place that's ours and that's not being used for something else," Ammann said. "There's a place you can go. It's a destination. It's a gathering place."
Ammann and Brock both expect the club to play an educational role, and they see the Old Town School of Folk Music as a model.
"We ought to be the Old Town School of Folk Music for chess," Ammann said, seeing it as "not just a chess club, but a chess school." He wants it to have an "open and welcoming" atmosphere, all the more important because enticing chess players to any one spot, stereotypically, can be like herding cats.
"Chess players are not the most social of creatures, it's true," Brock said.
"When you get a bunch of people together to form a chess center, you're likely to have a board of directors of introverts," Ammann added.
Still, they intend to carry their search for seed money and a suitable home through the endgame to some sort of triumph.
"We don't need huge amounts of money to get started," Ammann said. "Step One is do what you gotta do to get the doors open."
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