From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Ellison, producer of this show, and in this hour we present a live Moth event held at Union Chapel in the town of Oak Bluffs on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Your host is Jenny Allen, whose essays and articles appeared in publications like The New Yorker, and her one-woman show, I got sick, then I got better, can be seen in venues around the country. Here's Jenny Allen.

So we're going to start our stories. And we ask each storyteller to answer a very simple question that we've asked, and appropriately, because tonight's theme is Big Night, and this is such a great, big night for the Moth and the Vineyard.

The question is, what are the three things you need to be prepared for a Big Night? And our first storyteller is Maurice Ashley. And Maurice answered the question with,

a good night's sleep, a great breakfast, and a cup of hot chocolate. He says hot chocolate, that's my signature.

So you want to come on up and tell your story? Thanks, Jenny.

In the summer of 1985, when I was 19 years old, I played one of the most important chess matches of my career. Now this match is not found in any history books, nor are there any living witnesses to the events that transpire that day.

But this match proved to be a defining moment in my life as a chess player, teacher, and commentator.

Now I'm from Brooklyn, New York. More specifically though, Brownsville, Brooklyn. How many from Brownsville? Wow. Now Brownsville wasn't a fairytale place to grow up.

I mean, we had our sheriff abandoned buildings and gaggle of prostitutes and brazen car thieves. And our drug dealers who would play musical gunshots every single night to remind you who was in charge of the neighborhood.

Kind of like here at Martha's Vineyard. Mike Tyson, the boxer, he grew up in Brownsville. Brownsville was so rough, Mike had to get out of Brownsville.

But lucky for me, I had found and fallen in love with the game of chess. And I played it every single day. I studied chess books whenever I could. And I played with my friends. It was my altar in Brownsville that I had this game.

And one of my friends I was beaten on. And he got upset and he said, well, I know a bunch of guys who could crush you. Now I'm from Brownsville. Two strangers meet from Brownsville and want to say, you from Brownsville, the other will say never ran, never will.

So I said, who are these guys? And he said, well, they're known as the Black Bear School. The Black Bear School. So it's like picturing some peace spikes, peace spikes, smoking brothers, watching too many cowboy movies.

So I like, well, let's go. Let's see it. So he takes me to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. And I see one of the most intense scenes. It's like 30 African Americans, soul music blasting. And they're all around chessboards, either playing or watching.

And I come up and it's these legends I hear of the park, William Morrison, the exterminator who plays in the style of Bobby Fisher. I mean, you make one mistake and he finds the floor in your game and he'll inject venom in you that no medication can fix.

But the most interesting guy that they pointed out to me was George Golden, the fire breather.

Now, George had a way about him. He was about 5758. He was in his mid 30s. He had a little reddish hair, freckles. But George, when you saw him play, you knew he was a player immediately.

It was the way he moved his pieces. He'd moved the piece and it ended up exactly in the center of the square every single time.

And George had this great skill that you had to have in Brooklyn was he was a great trash talker. Because you know brothers, when we get together, we got a trash talk.

But in chess, there's a code of silence. You're not supposed to speak during the game, you know, button up, correct? No distracting your opponent.

So the great trash talkers had to have a way of getting around that code, of circumventing it. And the best people will tell you the three ways to do that.

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