The man in the Red Beret

The Man in the Red Beret
By Derek Bridges

If you have visited New Orleans or live here, you’ve probably seen Jude Acers (pronounced a-kers). He invariably wears a red beret and sets up his “World Chess Table” on Decatur Street near the Gazebo Cafe, a short walk from Cafe du Monde. He charges five dollars a game or into the thousands for more intensive lessons.

He returned to New Orleans in 1979 after a decade living in San Francisco and zigzagging the country on Greyhound buses. He gave chess exhibitions in malls, elementary schools, colleges and prisons, and a couple times got himself listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for simultaneous chess games by an individual. He sometimes hustled to keep himself fed.

He cast about the French Quarter a couple years with his chess table looking for the right spot. On July 21, 1981, local television journalist Eric Paulson’s segment about Jude broadcast nationally on PM Magazine, the same day Jude set up his table at its current location near the Gazebo and realized he’d found what he’d been looking for. If it rained, he could easily slide his operation beneath shelter. He had lighting for nighttime play. Heavy foot traffic and streams of cars along Decatur. And two of the most famous sites associated with 19th Century chess legend Paul Morphy were nearby, the Beauregard-Keyes House on Chartres Street where Morphy was born, and the building where Morphy lived out his life and died in a cold bathtub, upstairs at what is now Brennan’s Restaurant on Royal Street. That was also the day when Jude came up with the red beret hook:

A man came by with (a delivery) for the Gazebo, and he said, ‘Excuse me, sir, do you know where I can find someone to sign for this?’ I looked aver at 81 year old Chuck Ney, who had cooked for President Kennedy on the Mississippi River, and was chef for a short time at the Gazebo, and I said, ‘Chuck Ney over there. See that man in the black beret?’ As the man was going away it suddenly hit me. If mothers of children want to find me to play a five dollar game, or a three dollar game at that time for children, they may not know what I look like, so maybe if I wore a red beret. That’s all it was.

Some of the tour bus and carriage drivers call him “The Hand” for the royal wave he serves up for them if he’s not focused on a game, reading the New York Times, or occupied by his chess studies. He usually sets up around one in the afternoon–1 p.m., in fact, is his standard issue start time for pretty much everything. (“It simplifies things enormously.”) But if he’s in town, chances are he’s out there:

The important thing is to do it all the time. You think you need days off. You will find if you get enough sleep, you can go a hundred days in a row without any days off, unless you absolutely have to take them. But I do this every day. I never get tired of it.

Full article here.

Special thanks to Rusty Miller for sending us this article.