Square Chessmaster Anything but Pawn

Murray M. Turnbull is sitting in a chair in front of his family’s Christmas tree, watching a game of chess online. With his scruffy brown beard fading to white and a belly bulging against the buttons of his shirt, he could easily be mistaken for Santa Claus.

But it’s the chess board on the screen in front of him that is Turnbull’s most identifying feature. In spite of a peripatetic early life—growing up in an academic household, dropping out of Harvard, living homeless in Berkeley—Turnbull, a member of the Class of 1971, is today known best as “The Chessmaster” of Harvard Square.

Turnbull says he never believed in the value of a college degree.

“You can earn your own degree with chess, which anyone can do,” he says. “You simply display your ability on the board.”

His “season” runs from sometime in May until sometime in September, depending on the weather. For those five months or so, Turnbull plays in front of Au Bon Pain for 10 to 12 hours a day, often dragging slowly on a cigar.

From his $2 games and giving private lessons, Turnbull says he will earn anywhere from $8,000 to $10,000 a season. He runs his chess table like a business, recently moving away from timed games because, he says, they intimidate potential customers. Instead, he allows his opponent the first three moves. He takes obvious pleasure in his cleverness on the board.

“I’ve had success playing without the clock. They usually come up with some bizarre idea that doesn’t pan out,” he says. “They can’t get [check]mate in three moves, so I just start a few moves behind and catch up soon enough.”

Turnbull shrugs off his trademark sign proclaiming him “The Chessmaster”—a cardboard slab that he affixes to his table every day with several layers of heavy tape.

“A Chessmaster, that’s just what I am. I’m a Life National Master in the U.S. Chess Federation. But that’s too long to fit on the sign or to grab people’s attention.”

LEARNING THE MOVES

Turnbull grew up in Niscayuna in upstate New York, where his father worked for General Electric Research Laboratory. His father joined the faculty at Harvard in 1962, eventually taking the McKay chair in applied physics. His brother graduated from the College and the Harvard Law School.

Turnbull says he started playing chess at age 11 and has been playing ever since—excepting his first two years as a student at Harvard.

When Turnbull moved into Thayer in 1967, he immediately stood against the grain, according to his roommate Jonathan K. Walters ’71.

“Murray was an interesting guy—he really was a character. He would walk into a room and start an argument,” Walters says. “He didn’t care about pissing people off, but wasn’t pugnacious....Murray danced to the beat of his own drummer.”

Walters remembers that Turnbull was strongly opposed to the Vietnam War which was then the political focal point for many students at Harvard and across the country.

Turnbull, however, does not mention Vietnam in recalling the period today. In 1970, Turnbull dropped out of the College—a decision he says was motivated by his desire to avoid a predetermined life path.

“It was a lifestyle issue, I just didn’t want to get a degree and go teach,” Turnbull said. “I wanted to live life on my own terms. I didn’t believe in a degree or other official pieces of paper.”

BACK TO THE BOARD

When Turnbull dropped out of Harvard, he followed his free spirit to the University of California, Berkeley. But he wasn’t interested in being a student.

For a year, Turnbull lived homeless and became a part of the Berkeley street scene burgeoning at the time.

“I smoked a lot of pot and played a lot of chess,” Turnbull says. He played chess mostly at the Berkeley Student Union for 25 cents a games, earning roughly $5 a day—just enough to eat, he says.

His description of the experience reflects his delight in learning the tricks of the trade. Turnbull spent a week sleeping in a laundry room, regularly stole half-eaten cheeseburgers from a restaurant just after lunchtime, and finagled free meals from a shelter. He spent a few nights sequestered under the bushes behind a wall at the California Institute for the Deaf and Blind.

He returned to the Boston area in 1974 and took a series of manual jobs, moving frequently. At one point, he worked for Sylvania Lighting, replacing light bulbs.

Along the way, he reenrolled at Harvard, but didn’t make it through a full term before dropping out again.

After a brief stint at computer programming school, Turnbull began playing chess part-time in Harvard Square in 1982. The following year, Au Bon Pain opened and he started playing chess there full-time, which he says he has done ever since July, 1983.

BECOMING THE MASTER

Today, Turnbull describes a simple strategy for his chess playing.

“I try to play soundly and develop good results from a good position,” he says. “I used to be more wild and try to force the pace, but now I’m more patient. In the early days emotions were more a part of my game.”

Turnbull now prefers to play it cool, win or lose.

Many of his customers are students from Harvard and other local institutions. He has bested various members of the Harvard Chess Club, including current President Danny E. Goodman ’07.

“His reputation as a chess guy has spread,” Goodman says. “But he only plays five-minute chess which is not great for your understanding or ability to play a great game.”

But some of Turnbull’s opponents come from higher up in the University’s food chain.

Noam D. Elkies, professor of mathematics and Chess Club faculty adviser, won the 1996 world championship for solving chess problems—but has lost to the Chessmaster.

Though they haven’t played in a few years, Elkies acknowledges—conditionally—that Turnbull beats him more often than not.

“Murray and I have played a few times, and he’s won most but not all of those games,” Elkies says in an e-mail. “That’s what would be expected from the fact that we’re both masters but he’s a speed-chess specialist and I haven’t played a tournament game in some 15 years.”

In spite of more than two decades in the business, Turnbull maintains an encyclopedic memory of tournaments he has played—right down to the sequence of moves that led to a win.

“I could recite thousands of names of ranked players and who I’ve played against,” he says proudly.

Although competitive chess was once part of his life, Turnbull stopped playing rated chess matches in 1990. Since then, his ranking has slid a few points.

OFF-SEASON TRAINING

Turnbull isn’t playing chess publicly this month: he’s studying. With the end of the “season” for Turnbull comes his “vacation.” He spends much of that time watching chess matches between others online.

“I play little online, mostly I play with a computer program,” he says. “When I’m watching online I try to see what I would do and watch what they do.”

Turnbull, who now lives in a Concord Avenue apartment on the same floor as his father, never married and doesn’t keep his phone connected. He prefers to use his phone line for the Internet.

“I rarely plug in the phone, only when I need to make a call will I do it.”

But still, he says, there is no substitute for playing real matches.

“I’m a little bit slower when I go out in the spring. I get a little rusty,” he says. “Everyone gets rusty together, though.”