Barracuda still biting - king of 70s Montreal chess boom emerges

   The flannel-man on the right is seen here engaged in an apparent attempt to stare down another chess opponent in front of an invisible chess set.
   Two-time Montreal chess champ Jerry Rubin or (Gerald Rubin, more formally) was once famously nicknamed the Barracuda for his wicked skill set when it comes to the game of chess.
   He earned it during a match held long, long ago when, as a 14-year-old he stared down an opponent who suffered a heart attack midway through their match.
   The opponent recovered but Rubin's legend was created and opponents would  later cut a wide swathe when he'd saunter down the exposed brick hallways of Robert Drouin's En Passant Chess Club on St. Denis street.
   "He has nerves of steel and he's fast, real fast," said one opponent.
   The owner of that club noted that about 20 chess clubs sprouted up in 1972 in Montreal after a famous chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. About a dozen remained six years later.
   The photo above was shot earlier this week somewhere in lower Westmount but the exact location will remain confidential as the safety of those who cross the Barracuda's gaze cannot be entirely ensured by the staff of Coolopolis nor by its associated companies.
   Lawrence Day wrote this about Montreal as a chess city:
  Montreal is indeed a good chess city, likely the best in Canada. I haven't been there for twenty years but back in the "days" I used to play at the old "Cafe En Passent" and "Alekhine" chess clubs in Montreal in the 70s. Thems were the days, prior to all the anti-smoking bylaws and the Starbucks coffee-house culture. The En Passent cafe was much like one of those old chess cafes in Amsterdam, filled with smoke, darkly furnished with an endless assortment of old squeeky tables with inlaid chessboards, Staunton pieces scattered all over the joint, not very well lit, grungy, run by one chessnut with a voice like a foghorn and his one waitress who didn't have too much to do...all in this place packed with unkempt patzers plodding over their games while one table in particular would be surrounded by kibitzers watching local master/hustler Jerry Rubin giving everyone 5 to 1 time odds (and usually winning). One day there was a big commotion around his table...GM Spraggett (then IM Spraggett) was playing Rubin and giving *him* 5 to 1 odds...and winning (usually). That was quite the display, chess pieces dancing around the board like Mexican jumping beans while the poor old Soviet clocks would get pounded like punching bags...