King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game

by Paul Hoffman

  Pascal and Jack chatted briefly through ICC’s instant-messaging software:

  STANLEY PARK: They posted your odds for the World Championship on ChessBase.

  CHARLATAN: Don’t tell me©

  STANLEY PARK: I thought about responding, “but what’s Bacrot’s blitz rating on ICC?” But then I thought better about giving away your hand.

  Pascal excelled at speed chess. Although he was ranked 653rd in the world in leisurely over-the-board chess, at five-minute chess he had been ranked as high as third in the world on ICC. If Pascal and Bacrot tied their two slow games, they’d play two games at the rapid time control of twenty-five minutes each per game. If the rapid match was tied, they’d have a blitz playoff, in which Jack was convinced Pascal would prevail.

  CHARLATAN: Glad you didn’t show my hand!

  STANLEY PARK: If you make it past Bacrot, I could try to send you some other openings to try to spice things u.

  CHARLATAN:Yes, but let’s go one step at a time©

  STANLEY PARK: Like some mainline Svesh material, for example.

  Jack was referring to the Sveshnikov, one of the most popular and heavily analyzed openings of the year. (Jack had in fact prepared Pascal to play the Sveshnikov, but a sideline, not the mainline.) The 2004 ChessBase database had 20,850 games with the Sveshnikov.

  CHARLATAN:Ugh© Don’t scare me!

  Pascal signed off ICC and went to the ChessBase Web site to see what the bookmakers were saying about his chances. Pascal scanned the list of 128 players until he found his name near the bottom. As the 114th seed, he was given odds of 13 million to 1. (Irina’s old flame Morozevich, who inexplicably withdrew at the last moment, had odds of 7 to 1.)

  “Well we knew I wasn’t the favorite,” he said. “But look at Amon Simutowe’s odds—one hundred million to one. I guess I can feel good.” (International master Amon Simutowe, the top player from Zambia, was attending UMBC’s arch collegiate chess rival, the University of Texas at Dallas.) Near the top of the list was number fifteen seed Etienne Bacrot, with odds of 62 to 1. Pascal told me that Bacrot had just had a string of great tournaments. “When those are rated,” Pascal said, “Bacrot will actually be the number three seed. I’m OK with it. These top guys are not infallible. I’ve looked at Bacrot’s games. He does make mistakes.”

  It was almost noon, and we decided to take our first and only walk outside the El Mahary. Friday and Saturday were the equivalent of the weekend, and so most Libyans were not at work and storefronts were boarded up. We stayed on the main road overlooking the Mediterranean. The street was pretty much deserted. We went by a small, makeshift amusement park in which the bumper cars were colliding and the teacups were spinning, but nobody was in them. The few people we passed stared at us or crossed the street toward us to get a better look. After we’d walked perhaps a mile, Pascal said he felt out of place being the only Westerners on the street and suggested we go back to the hotel.

  He told me that he had also been uncomfortable on the bus ride from the airport because there was no security and anybody could tell that the bus was carrying foreigners because of a large banner that said “World Chess Champions.” The tight security FIDE had promised the Israelis was nowhere evident. We weren’t provided with bodyguards, and although everyone who entered the El Mahary had to pass through a metal detector, no one was searched when it went off.

  We returned to the hotel and got ready for the opening ceremony. It was a FIDE tradition that the ceremony include a traditional dance of the host country. I kept thinking of a dance my friend Matt had performed for me that he said we’d see in Libya. “Now we are airplanes,” Matt said, with his arms stretched out like wings. “Gaboom!” he said, and he fell to the ground. “Now we dance disco,” and Matt demonstrated. “Gaboom!” he said, and fell down again. The actual dance was much less exciting. It involved peasants and farmers fighting over an urn of scarce water.

  Whoever choreographed the ceremony went out of their way to counter the image of the country as a militaristic police state based on a cult of personality surrounding Muammar Gadhafi. There were no armed guards or police officers. We all stood awkwardly for the Libyan national anthem and watched an interminable film on the history of the “peace-loving” Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The film never mentioned Gadhafi by name, although we were treated to lots of footage of him in a bright red jacket inspecting construction sites and reclining regally inside a large concrete pipe. The film would have been more effective for a Western audience if it had not included the loaded word “jihad,” even if it was in the context of Libyans’ fighting their “Italian occupiers” in the early twentieth century.

  Pascal noticed that Gadhafi himself—or if it was not him, a perfect body double—was sitting serenely in the audience next to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and other FIDE dignitaries. Gadhafi had no conspicuous security detail and wore an understated gray jacket. The fact that he did not speak at the ceremony seemed to be a deliberate reinforcement of the message that the country no longer centered on him. I turned around in my seat and snapped a photo of Leader before Pascal, who had visions of undercover marksmen taking me down, could stop me.

  Gadhafi’s son Mohammed spoke at the ceremony. He, too, sported a tailored European suit to make the international guests more comfortable and gave a biblical-sounding speech that claimed chess was the human mind’s highest calling and described chess champions as the finest specimens of our species. The translator was amusingly bad. Her intonation was completely off (“wel-COME chess champ-EEE-ons”), and Pascal giggled at inappropriate points during Gadhafi’s solemn remarks. Fifty-six women in paramilitary outfits, each carrying one of the fifty-six flags of the participating countries, marched slowly to the stage. The flag bearers did a catchy dance in which the all-green Libyan flag seemed to pursue and ensnare its American counterpart and vice versa. This was evidently the first time an American flag had flown in Libya under Muammar Gadhafi’s rule. After the stage was cleared, it was illuminated by green strobes. Disco music blasted, smoke from dry ice filled the stage, and a trapdoor opened in the middle. Out of the door rose a six-foot-high phallic trophy for which the chess players thought they were competing. Later the players learned that it was an oversize replica of the actual, foot-high trophy.

  Antoaneta Stefanova, the newly crowned women’s world champion from Bulgaria, came to the stage and drew lots to see which players would have White in the next day’s game. Pascal was pleased with the drawing: he had Black in the first game. “That’s good,” he whispered, “because if I win the first game, I’m in a great spot with White last. And if I lose as Black, having White last will give me a chance to recover.”

  After the two-and-a-half-hour ceremony, we were ushered into a crowded reception area for food and drink. Nijar told me that Mohammed Gadhafi would see me shortly. I spied three bottles of Beck’s on one of the buffet tables and, in the interest of fulfilling my secondly duties, wound my way through the thirsty players to snag a beer. Alas, it turned out to be nonalcoholic. Pascal was across the room talking to a woman from FIDE when a young Libyan man approached me and introduced himself. He looked around nervously and asked in a low voice in bad English whether I could help him get a job in the United States. I told him I didn’t know anything about immigration or work permits. He whispered, in a tone of desperation, “I need to get out of here. You must help me.” Then he headed off.

  I downed the ersatz beer. A child waiter offered me a platter of dates. I worked my way toward Pascal on the far side of the room but was thwarted by two Libyan men my age who blocked my path. “Mr. Paul, how are you enjoying the food of our peace-loving country?” one of them asked.

  “The dates are good,” I said. “Very fresh.”

  “I’m glad, Mr. Paul,” the man continued. “Why have you come to Libya, Mr. Paul?”

  “For the chess tournament, of course. I’m a journalist and I write about chess.”

  “Please come with us a moment, Mr. Paul.�
�� And the two men guided me through the crowd into the corner of the room. “We are information officers, Mr. Paul, and we need you to complete some paperwork.” He handed me a form and a pen. The form asked first for my name and home address. The Libyan authorities already had that information so I saw no harm in providing it again. The rest of the form asked for the names of any Libyans I had spoken to in Tripoli, and the date, time, and subject of the conversations. Clearly I was expected to report the exchange I just had, but I didn’t want to get the man in trouble. I also wondered if he might have been a plant who wanted to goad me into saying something compromising that would get me tossed out of the country or worse. So I left that part of the form blank and just signed my name. The information officer who had been doing all of the talking shook his head and said in an incredulous tone, “No conversations, Mr. Paul. No conversations. Then you are free to go.”

  After the interrogation, I returned to the reception. Nijar told me an urgent matter prevented Gadhafi from seeing me that night but that the interview would happen in the morning. I found Pascal and vowed to myself that I’d stay by his side, so that it would be harder for the “information officers” to isolate me.

  “That’s Bacrot,” Pascal said, pointing to a man in a black T-shirt and black pants.

  “Did you guys speak?”

  “Yeah, small talk. He said he was married and expecting a child.”

  “Was he civil?”

  “Yes, but he looked arrogant. He wants to beat me.”

  “No surprise! You want to beat him.”

  “Yeah but I don’t like it when it’s so obvious. He also looked tired.”

  “Good.”

  Pascal had to attend a mandatory meeting of all the players. The meeting was not officially open to the press, but I tagged along anyway. FIDE representatives explained the time control and the prize fund. They asked players to provide a bank account to which prize money could be wired. The international chess federation was generally inept and corrupt, but in this meeting I felt sorry for the FIDE representatives. The players acted like spoiled children and asked all sorts of questions that would have been better handled in private. One player said he didn’t have a bank account and would have difficulty cashing a check as large as the prize he anticipated. Could FIDE give him the prize in cash? he wondered. Another semi-hysterical player was concerned that he might be penalized for violating the FIDE dress code. His luggage had been lost by the airline, he said, so he would be forced to wear the same rumpled clothes every day.

  IT WAS 9:00 P.M. BY THE TIME WE GOT BACK TO OUR ROOM. OUR POSSESSIONS had been shifted around. The State Department had warned me that my hard drive would be copied, but it wasn’t just my laptop that was in a different place. My tape recorder had been moved from my computer case to my garment bag. My contact lens case had been opened and moved from the sink in the bathroom to the top of the television.

  Pascal was finally ready to look at a chessboard, and I didn’t want to distract him by pointing out the dislocated items or describing my encounter with the officers. “Paul,” he said, as he turned on his computer, “I’m running out of ways to avoid preparing. Now I know I have Black tomorrow, so I have no excuses.”

  Pascal explained that Bacrot generally opened with the queen pawn but recently had been starting with the king pawn. If he advanced the queen pawn on his first move, Pascal planned to push his own queen pawn and steer the game into what’s called the…a6 Slav. “It is a good defense for me,” he said, “because there’s less theory than the King’s Indian, the Queen’s Indian, and the Nimzo-Indian.” There was still plenty of theory to review because such heavy hitters as Kasparov and Morozevich had recently taken it up. But the beauty of the…a6 Slav was that it was a defense that Bacrot himself played as Black. “It can be a very good strategy to play what they play against them,” Pascal said. “They may have no idea what to do because they’ve convinced themselves that Black is equal in all lines.” Pascal opened the file of his own games and ran through the six in which he had played the…a6 Slav. “It’s good,” he added, “that there are not that many interesting games in ChessBase for him to see what I’m going to play.” For the next hour Pascal looked at the most recent…a6 Slav games played at the highest levels, and he studied a published monograph about the opening that he had brought with him from the States.

  “I know this stuff pretty well,” he concluded, “so it’s time to look at king-pawn stuff.” He went through a dozen of Bacrot’s e4 games. “Look here. He does badly against things that aren’t standard. He prefers ordinary stuff.” Because Bacrot was new to e4, he would understandably have focused his study on the most popular lines. “I’ll vary quickly from the mainline,” Pascal continued. “I’m not into working at home to unearth a novelty on the twenty-first move of the Sveshnikov. I don’t spend hours in advance refuting things. That’s what Kasparov has his team of patzer seconds to do—2600 patzers. I’ll refute things at the board.” So he told me he planned to vary on the eighth move of the Sveshnikov with a rare bishop move pioneered by Bent Larsen, my old simul foe. Pascal examined the file on the bishop move that Jack had put together. “I have a good short-term memory,” Pascal said, “although I have been known occasionally to mess up move order. I can commit lots of lines to memory just by rapidly playing though them. Just don’t quiz me a week from now.”

  Pascal quit studying around midnight when we were distracted by the smell of incense that seemed to be pumped into our room through the poorly functioning air conditioner. “Paul, maybe they’re trying to poison you,” he joked.

  “That’s Mr. Paul,” I said, and I told him the story of my confrontation with the information officers.

  He was concerned. “I will try to make all this crap worthwhile,” he said, “by doing well tomorrow.”

  “Cool!”

  “I’m in a pretty good mood, but this is a strange place.”

  ON GAME DAY, PASCAL GOT UP AT 8:00 A.M. AND REVIEWED HIS OPENINGS for a couple of hours. In the meantime I went to the press room and checked my e-mail. I had a message from British Airways that our return flight from Tripoli had been canceled because the airline was reducing its service to Libya from three flights a week to two. Because Pascal’s and my reservations were not linked in the airline’s computer system—I had simply matched his itinerary—there was no guarantee we would get the same flight home. Moreover, his flight could change again depending on how long he lasted in the knockout tournament. I did not want to return to the airport alone. I was determined to make sure our plane reservations were linked so that as Pascal’s ticket changed, mine would automatically change, too. I returned to the room and tried to call Ann so that she could arrange this, but I couldn’t get an outside line.

  I decided to try the hotel’s business center, and when I arrived, I was accosted by a Libyan who implored me to arrange for him to be admitted to an American university. After I brushed the man off, the smiling attendant in the business center, whom I had not met before, greeted me as if we knew each other: “Hello, Mr. Paul.”

  Everywhere I went in the hotel I had the eerie experience of strangers knowing my name. The business center attendant could not get me an outside line to the States, even though I noticed that he had no difficulty connecting two other people to their respective home countries. I was reduced to making an Internet phone call, which meant that I had to shout into a bad microphone attached to a PC. By the time I reached Ann, the two information officers who had questioned me the day before were sitting on a couch across the room. They heard my whole conversation. I asked Ann to call Pascal’s mother and make sure his travel agent had my credit card number and instructions to match Pascal’s flights however they changed. She expressed reluctance about giving out my credit card, and I struggled not to sound panicked as I impressed on her the importance of doing this. After the call ended, the officers interrogated me again.

  “Mr. Paul, how is your stay?” the foreman asked.

  “I’
m looking forward to the chess,” I said.

  “A noncommittal answer, Mr. Paul,” the man said. “Perhaps today you will be more committal in completing the paperwork.” He handed me the same form he had given me the evening before. There were now two Libyans who had asked for my help in getting to the United States, but again I signed my name and left the rest blank.

  “Still no conversations,” the man said. “How very interesting! Enjoy the chess, Mr. Paul, if that’s really why you’re here.”

  I went to the tournament office to ask Nijar when my interview with Mohammed Gadhafi would take place. He said it had been canceled again. I wondered now whether there was a connection between the information officers’ intercepting me twice just before scheduled interviews and their last-minute cancellation. If it was this hard to meet Gadhafi’s son for a game of chess, I didn’t think there was much chance of my getting together with his father. I put in a request through Nijar’s office to meet Kalmykian and FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and play chess with him. One way or another, I was determined to face a world leader at the board.

  I reminded myself that I got into trouble whenever I was not with Pascal. I returned to our room and decided to spare him the details of my latest encounter until after his game. He had just finished his preparation—“I don’t like to do much chess just before playing; I prefer to relax”—and so we went to the dining room for an early lunch. Bacrot arrived while we were eating dessert. He was dressed in all white, like Tom Wolfe. “He’s gone from black to white,” Pascal said. “Is that because he has the White pieces today or because he’s in a peaceful mood?”