{"id":221,"date":"2025-04-09T15:49:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T15:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/04\/09\/the-calvin-blocker-story\/"},"modified":"2025-04-09T15:49:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T15:49:21","slug":"the-calvin-blocker-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/04\/09\/the-calvin-blocker-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Calvin Blocker Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\"> <a class=\"asset-img-link\" href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c02e860fe3969200d-pi\" style=\"float: left;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Calvin Blocker\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c02e860fe3969200d img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c02e860fe3969200d-320wi\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;\" title=\"Calvin Blocker\" \/><\/a>My wife and I owned a house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Euclid Heights Boulevard, from 1986-1991. That location put me within walking distance of the old Arabica coffee house on Coventry Road. The Coventry district was quite a Bohemian scene in those days and there I met numerous interesting characters of the sort one expects to find in coffee houses: the &#0160;<span title=\"French-language text\"><em lang=\"fr\">fl\u00e2neur<\/em><\/span> and <span title=\"French-language text\"><em lang=\"fr\">fl\u00e2neuse<\/em><\/span>, wannabe poets and novelists, pseudo-intellectual bullshitters of every stripe, and a wide range of chess players from patzers to masters. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">It was there that I became acquainted with International Master Calvin Blocker. Observing a game of mine one day, he kibitzed, &quot;You&#39;d be lucky to be mated.&quot;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">One day he came to my house to give me a lesson. He pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down from memory the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chess.com\/forum\/view\/chess-openings\/paul-morphys-count-isouard-duke-of-brunswick\">famous game<\/a> in which the great Paul Morphy crushed Count Isouard and the Duke of Braunschweig in 17 moves. &quot;Study this,&quot; Calvin said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.clevescene.com\/cleveland\/blockers-gambit\/Content?oid=1492313\" target=\"_self\">Here<\/a>&#0160;is his story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">Harvey Pekar&#0160;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iJot2mLy40Y\" target=\"_self\">talks about<\/a>&#0160;Coventry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 14pt;\">For the true chess aficionado, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/LROhAYEXGx8\">here<\/a> is 45 minutes of Grandmaster Ben Finegold on Calvin Blocker.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My wife and I owned a house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Euclid Heights Boulevard, from 1986-1991. That location put me within walking distance of the old Arabica coffee house on Coventry Road. The Coventry district was quite a Bohemian scene in those days and there I met numerous interesting characters of the sort one &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/04\/09\/the-calvin-blocker-story\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Calvin Blocker Story&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,169,203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-chess","category-questers-and-other-oddballs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}