The Café de la Regence

One of the great Chess venues was the famous Café de la Regence "Place du Palais-Royal" in Paris, just beside the Louvre. The chess tables are gone, alas, but once they were frequented by the likes of Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and Ben Franklin.

Voltaire contested a postal chess match from there with Frederick The Great, dispatching his moves to a waiting courtier. Corporal Napoleon also spent a lot of spare time there absorbed in his favorite pastime.

The story goes that a beautiful girl disguised as a man checkmated Robespierre and then revealed her identity to plead for the life of her condemned lover. She got an order for his immediate release.

A kibitzer who always watched the games in total silence was asked to settle a dispute. But he had no idea how to play! He was simply a married man, said he, who preferred to spend his evenings away from home.

George Walker, an English master, described the congenial coffee-house in 1840:

     "Stove-heated to oppression, gas-lighted, mirrors in
     abundance and slabs of marble to top its tables. On Sunday
     all keep their hats on, to save space, and an empty chair is
     worth a ransom. The din of voices shakes the roof as we
     enter, like a beast-show at feeding time!

     "Can this be chess, the recreation of solitude? We sigh for
     cotton to stuff our ears. Mocha is brought. We sip. Manners
     are to be noted and chessmen are to be sketched.

     "The English are the best lookers-on in the world, the
     French the very worst. They do not hesitate to whisper their
     opinions freely, to point with their hands over the board,
     to foretell the probable future, to vituperate the past. I
     have all but vowed that when next I play chess in Paris, it
     shall be in a barricaded room.

     "Midnight is long gone. Players are thinning, the garcons
     yawn, the drums have beaten the round, and the good wives of
     Paris are airing their husbands' nightcaps. I reluctantly
     prepare to face the cold. Farewell, at least for a season,
     to the Café de la Regence."

In 1858 the American Paul Morphy won acclaim by playing eight strong opponents at once without sight of the board. After ten hours he won 6 and drew 2, thus breaking Andre Philidor's record of three blindfold games there in 1783! His secretary F. T. Edge caught the moment:

Morphy stepped from the arm chair in which he had been almost immovable for ten consecutive hours with having tasted a morsel of anything, even water, during the whole consecutive period; yet as fresh, apparently, as when he sat down. The English and Americans, of whom there were scores present set up stentorian Anglo-Saxoo cheers, and the French joined in as the whole crowd made a simultaneous rush at our hero. The waiters of the café had formed a conspiracy to carry Morphy in triumph on their shoulders, but the multitude was so compact they could not get near him, and finally they had to abandon their attempt. Great bearded fellows grasped his hands, and it was nearly half an hour before we could get out of the café . Pè re Morel fought a passage through the crowd by main strength, and we finally got into the street. There the scene was repeated the multitude was greater out of doors than in the café , and the shouting, if possible, more deafening...

That's the way it was. Today the blindfold record stands at 52 games.

Source: Evans on Chess - Jan 26 1996 from Chess Connection
'Total Chess' by David Spanier