Difficult though it was to believe from their appearance, the score or so men in Lichfield's Guildhall had much in common.
One had a neatly trimmed beard and scholarly spectacles while another sported a modified Mohican haircut and fingers decorated with lurid tattoos.
And their occupations were just as varied as their appearance. The company included a family doctor, long distance lorry driver, deputy headmaster, computer manager and retired journalist.
Half way through the rainy evening, there were joined by two bright-eyed schoolboys.
They had all come togetger to spend the evening in one of life's more obsessive activities - an addiction which would improve and might even attract, the aimless young. On Thursday nights the Guildhall is home to Lichfield Chess Club.
Fritz was not there. Though I was assured he was as good a player as anyone there., indeed probably better, he was not the sort to be made welcome by all the members. That's because Fritz is a computer chess programme.
At the Lichfield Chess Club there is a slightly disapproving air when computer chess is even mentioned.
Dr. Paul Wallace, who competes in international tournaments and is the acknowledged best payer in the club, insists chess is a test of character as well as intellect.
"You have to be calm in a crisis. Lose your head and you're done for," he says.
Computers always stay calm, so they offer no hope of expoliting human frailties. And they exhibit none of the virtues Dr. Wallace attributes to an "honest" game.
Then he admitted that winning "boosts the ego a little". No doubt victory is sweeter if the triumph is over man rather than machine.
Dr. Wallace, having completed his Birmingham League match - he also plays for Cheddleton in the chess equivalent of football's Premiership - spent the rest of the evening coaching 15-year-old Nicholas Griffin.
Lichfield knows all about encouraging young chess players. David Short, the club secretary, is the father of a Grandmaster, only the seventh Englishman to acquire that eminence.
Nigel Short sprang to fame with his $3 million world championship match against Garry Kasparov in 1993. But long before that, David Short knew that his son was a prodigy.
Nigel was competing with adults when he was five and, soon after, was paying income tax on his chess earnings.
But only phenomenal talent makes money out of the game. Most players compete for love - perhaps more properly described as an obsession.
Not every chess player learned the game at his parent's knee. The young Paul Wallace was looking in bewilderment at the pieces of a chess set when a painter, who was decorating the family house, showed him where they should go on the board and how they should be moved. It was , he says, "love at first move".
Robin Farmery - the club treasurer who has been playing competitive chess for 50 years - began when, as a thirteen- year- old schoolboy, he discovered that if he joined the chess society he did not have to go out in the rain at lunchtime.
Richard Smith - the second of the aspiring 15-year-olds - started to move knights and pawns under the supervision of his father.
But he was the first member of his family to sign on at the Lichfield Chess Club. His father followed and gladly admits that his son often beats him.
Richard modestly suggests that his success is the result of knowing hid father's weaknesses.
"He often forgets pieces at the corners of the board" he says.
So what is it about chess that makes two fifteen-year-olds want to spend their Thursday evenings concentrating on moving kings and queens, knights, castles and bishops around a board?
The answer lies in the submerged brutality of an apparently gentle game.
Nicholas Griffin and Richard Smith are captivated by chess because it offers the chance to have a head-to-head confrontation with an opponent.
The joy, says Richard, is "out-witting someone - especially if it is my dad".
Clearly, the mild-mannered teenager clarinettist has only to be pointed towards a chess set to become a ruthless aggressive competitior. Chess develops the will to win. That is why it was encouraged in the former Soviet Union.
For almost four hours the meeting room in the Guildhall was completely silent. The competitors did not speak and the hands on the special clocks, which record the minutes taken to complete each move, moved on without the faintest tick or whirr.
Every player was completely engrossed in the chessmen on the board before him.
Could chess be added to the National Curriculum? It is hard to think of a better way to increase attention span and, at the same time, work off adolescent aggression.
It could be promoted in our schools with the entirely justified slogan: "You have to be tough to play chess."
