All the Wrong Moves

by Sasha Chapin

  These contradictions went unresolved throughout the two months following my first communication with Finegold, during which I attempted to prepare for his tutelage with more mostly fruitless practice. It was a time of tension, after which Katherine drove me to the airport and kissed me goodbye, in a state composed of several sentiments hanging together like the molecules in margarine.

  * * *

  I arrived in St. Louis a few days before my first meeting with Finegold, to have a chance to explore the city. And during this pre-Finegold interval, I had a random meeting with a stranger that would prove to be an omen of the month ahead. She was a woman walking alone downtown, screaming.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Holy shit,” she screamed.

  “Um,” I said.

  “Fuck all of these pussy-ass people,” she screamed.

  “This city is hell on earth,” she screamed.

  “I am so tired of this life,” she screamed.

  “Damn it,” she screamed.

  “The sun is too hot,” she screamed.

  She walked away. And, unfortunately, I came to agree with her about the city of St. Louis.

  This is probably my fault. I am a great believer in the idea that a failure to love is often the fault of the lover. If I were more patient and more curious and more forgiving, I probably could’ve found more to appreciate. I’m told that St. Louis contains many beautiful sun-strewn lanes, and cheerful people, and fun bars where tender words are exchanged over locally made beers of the highest quality. But that is not what I found. What I found was a humid, boring, and flat place, dappled with some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in North America. According to the website of the St. Louis Police, you shouldn’t “wear clothing or shoes that restrict your movement” in their fair metropolis, so you can run away from assailants if you need to.

  The local food, also, is hilarious. There’s a special kind of pizza they make there, which is a prank played by Satan. It’s a cracker, topped with ketchup, finished with a goopy kind of processed cheese that you’ve never had before, because they invented a new kind of cheese for this pizza. It’s edible caulking that clings to the back of your throat, reminding you that you live in an unjust world.

  Based on my experiences, I cannot recommend St. Louis. Unless, that is, you’re interested in studying chess. Weirdly, St. Louis is the home of the world’s best chess school. This unexpected juxtaposition exists because of the fact that chess is the greatest love of billionaire Rex Sinquefield, a longtime St. Louis resident. Although he was never a skilled player, he was a skilled investor, to say the least, and he arrived in retirement age with enough money that he could quite casually open an air-conditioned temple devoted to his favorite game, and bankroll grandmaster lectures as well as exclusive tournaments with big prizes for the strongest players in the world. The club is housed in a pristine two-story commercial property, and might be mistaken for a posh hernia clinic or a yoga studio if not for the chess pieces depicted on the frontispiece’s stained glass windows.

  As with many chess clubs, the social scene is a mix of a few demographics who couldn’t possibly understand each other in any other setting. There are the rich kids, clad in spotless primary colors, hair thick with drugstore pomade, murmuring conspiratorially about what they’ve learned in recent grandmaster lessons. There are old men in fanny packs lounging around them, wearing faded T-shirts, thumbing ancient chess paperbacks far from their original relevance. Middle-aged Slavs and Cypriots walk from room to room with the confidence of former World Champions, and are occasionally in fact former World Champions. Young staff in uniform red polos watch everything wearily and collaborate on difficult puzzles behind the front desk during the quieter hours of the day.

  I showed up when I was told to, signed up for a membership, and hung around the lobby surveying the local milieu until Finegold entered a few minutes later. It was funny seeing him in life, after having watched his face move for so many hours. Ben is a combination of scary-looking and adorable. His hooded eyes and hooked nose give him a severity of expression that would serve the social purposes of a vicious mafioso or a disapproving rabbi. He’s broad, squat, and heavy, and has an intense gaze that sometimes indicates that you’ve been singled out for special criticism among all of the creatures in existence. But his mouth is often settled in an amused smirk, he’s always in a grumpy kind of good cheer, and his gravelly voice has a cryptic musicality that makes it sound like he’s been telling one long joke for his entire life, a joke which may or may not eventually find a punchline.

  “Hey, Finegold,” I said.

  “Sup,” he said.

  “I’m Sasha, that Canadian guy.”

  “Who?”

  “That guy who emailed you.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Yeah, so, here I am.”

  “How many lessons are you looking for?”

  “I was thinking like ten hours.”

  “You could do more—the more you pay, the more you learn.”

  As I considered this, a class of kids, whom he had just taught, flooded out of the classroom and started playing blitz in the lobby, which is to say that they started knocking pieces off tables, knocking clocks off tables, making illegal moves, and screaming at each other. Finegold presided for a few minutes until the parents showed up, delighting the kids with a barrage of verbal abuse, and then returned to me with a searching look on his face.

  “Jesus, I want to kill myself,” he said, very quietly.

  “Wait till you see my games,” I said.

  “You’re not here to impress me, you’re here to learn.”

  “But I’d like to impress you.”

  “Well, you won’t.”

  And he was right. He was right about everything. Sooner or later, everything he told me came true.

  DON‘T LOSE ALL YOUR PIECES

  During the first lesson, Finegold asked me to show him some of my games. And of course I wanted to wow him, even though he’d told me that was impossible. I wanted him to tell me that my sadness was misplaced, that I was secretly brilliant, that he could unearth my potential instantly, perhaps with an incantation of several magic words, accompanied by the wiggling of his fingers. To get that process going, I showed him one of my victories from Ottawa, in which I had the white pieces against a man named Loamy Washington. It was the game I was proudest of.

  Being desperate for Finegold’s approval, I elaborately soliloquized about the game as I played it out on a board between us, interrupting the narration to explain the strategical ideas behind every move, saving special drama for the last few moves preceding checkmate. It was like an unmetered poem, stuffed with misplaced enthusiasm. Finegold interrupted with minor criticism of some of my decisions, but mostly he just listened. And after my summary, he gathered his thoughts for a moment and I waited for him to express his admiration for what I’d presented.

  “Okay,” he said, “you just said a lot of fancy stuff, but I didn’t really hear any of it. What I heard was that you played some decent moves, and your opponent played some decent moves, and then he lost his rook. Basically, we could’ve stopped after that. Okay, so maybe your technique could’ve been improved a little bit. But what happened is that he blundered. And you didn’t blunder. Show me another game.”

  So I showed him one of the games from New York City where I lost, terribly. Again, I spoke at great volume, detailing all of the intricacies of my frustrated plans.

  “Okay, so, again,” he said, “what happened here is that you fucked up, and you’re just saying it in a fancy way. You had a nice position. You would’ve won from that position, eleven days out of ten, if you were a grandmaster. And then you lost all your pieces. That’s it. And this is what I teach my students. You come in here, and you’re like, show me how to play like Carlsen, show me this weird checkmate. And I look at your games, and all that happens is that you lose all your pieces, or you don’t. When you’re an advanced student, you can worry abou
t more complicated stuff. But until then, I’ll teach you how to avoid losing your pieces.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “So anyway,” he said, “what’s your goal in chess?”

  “I want to beat a 2000-rated player,” I said.

  “You’ll probably do that, and the reason you will, is you won’t blunder away your pieces.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes—your problem isn’t as complicated as you think it is.”

  Those were such reassuring words. And such terrible words. Because Finegold was implying that my defects were utterly common. He had seen students like me before. He would also see them again. And all of us were suffering from the same ailment. And it was absolutely mundane.

  I don’t know why this came as such a surprise. It’s not like any of my other problems are terribly interesting. They’re all pretty normal. Like “first love is annoyingly memorable.” And “life is short and weird and full of danger.” And “suffering always finds you, even in your beautifully decorated apartment.”

  Every year, I discover, more and more, that I’m the same as everyone else. Which is kind of great, because it means that life is not so mysterious. You just do what other people do. Say please. Floss. When you’re making scrambled eggs, stir them really fast so they don’t get crusty. Find a few good people and try to hang on to them. Don’t lose all your pieces.

  JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE GOES CRAZY, IT DOESN‘T MEAN YOU ALSO HAVE TO GO CRAZY

  “If your wife cheats on you, that’s bad,” Finegold said. “She shouldn’t have done that. But if you then kill her, kill yourself, and the mailman, that’s not really constructive. You shouldn’t escalate a situation just because someone else did.”

  “How does this apply to chess?” I said.

  “Well, you consider yourself a creative guy, which is kind of a problem. So, from move two, you’re going out of your mind, trying to invent a work of genius. Which means that when your opponents play crazy, you start playing even crazier. Don’t do that. Just don’t be crazy at all. When they play weird, just play normal good moves. Other grandmasters will tell you that you have to punish your opponents for all of their mistakes. That’s one point of view. My point of view is that you have to win chess games.”

  The wisdom of this became clear after the lesson, when we played some blitz at one of the tables set up on the sidewalk outside the club. The muggy air was licking my face. Cute couples walked by on their way to Whole Foods, unaware that they were passing a spectacle of truly historic importance: my first game against a grandmaster. It was also the first time I’d ever played against someone drinking two brands of seltzer at once. Finegold played the Slav Defense, an extremely solid opening.

  “I hate playing against the Slav,” I said.

  “The truth hurts,” he said.

  “Is this a good move?”

  “It’s a move.”

  “But is it good?”

  “Probably not. Whose turn is it?”

  He moved his queen deep into my territory. For the first ten moves, I thought I might have a microscopic chance of victory, because I didn’t lose all of my pieces. But, every other turn, I made a slight mistake that I didn’t know I was making, and in the face of my craziness, he responded not with theatrics but with quiet malice. As sweat dripped down my chest, I realized that a crowd was gathering—all the kids in the neighborhood wanted to see Finegold crush me. I tried to put up a good fight so I could entertain these little boys and girls, who were soon to be embittered adults, maybe losing at chess themselves. But Finegold didn’t give me a good fight—he gave me a slow, vicious grind, only allowing me to twist lamely while he attained total control. I was a jittery rabbit, running from a surefooted cheetah, in a maze whose pathways slowly curled in on each other and contracted, until we were confined together, predator and prey, in a tiny cell. Under the pressure, I cracked, and made a horrible blunder.

  “You’ll have to forgive him for that,” Finegold said to the audience. “He’s tired, because he just moved here. From Crazytown.”

  NEVER RESIGN

  All night, screams came from outside my window. They were happy screams, at first, but soon they became angry screams. Apparently, the house party across the street was turning into a violent melee. The police arrived, and blessed silence returned, until maybe fifteen minutes later, when a spell of gunshots in the distance was rewarded by the sound of many others. My nerves were inconsolable, and I couldn’t sleep.

  And as the wet, waxy dawn crept across the window, I left the house and went down the street to the café where everyone hated me. Why they did, I’m not sure—I was always polite and I tipped generously. But their contempt was palpable. Every time I bought their coffee, I was given a cold, flat stare, which I returned. We were all clear on who liked each other. Nobody liked anybody. This happened every day. Then I took a bus and then a train to the club. You’ll be happy to know that the St. Louis metro officially forbids weapons, and advertises this in every train car.

  When I got to the club the day after the nighttime excitement, a few days after I had first enrolled, I met up with Isaac Schrantz, an employee whom I’d become chummy with on the basis of a shared intuition that we were equally unskilled. We’d established a series of officially rated games, which we called the Good Guys Fun Times Classic. This was possible because essentially everyone who worked there was a certified arbiter, so you could show up at any time of day and declare your intention to get checkmated in an official manner.

  Due to my insomnia, I was a mess. This was not aided by another gigantic coffee from Starbucks I was drinking as I came in. Never before had my motion so resembled that of a despairing hummingbird. I was pale as a clammy baby and all the wrong kinds of sensuous. Finegold was hanging around the front desk as I came in.

  “Hey, where’s my Starbucks?” he said.

  “I didn’t know you would be here,” I said.

  “Well, now you know.”

  “I’ll get you some coffee after I checkmate Isaac. Hey, Isaac.”

  “Sup,” said Isaac.

  We went upstairs and commenced our game. Finegold didn’t have to wait long for coffee, but it wasn’t because I delivered checkmate. About ten moves in, because of my fidgetiness, I ran afoul of a merciless rule of tournament chess: the touch-move rule. You touch a piece, you’ve got to move it.

  Erroneously, I tapped my bishop. Which immediately implied that I had to send it uselessly out onto a random square on the board, which, in turn, meant that Isaac got to take one of my knights for free. This was all so depressing that I immediately gave up. After we shook hands, and he consoled me, I went downstairs to the front desk and told Finegold, who was hanging out on the sofa and mocking his colleagues, that I could start my lesson early. His complexion deepened.

  From our first lesson, Finegold was always telling me how mad he was. Everything I did angered him, apparently. “I’ve never been so furious,” he’d say. Or “I’m sooo mad.” But he didn’t seem mad at all, really. His tone remained jolly, even as he was insulting my every decision. But when we sat down together, during this, our fourth consultation, he looked at me with genuine anger. It was a look that nearly made my testicles fall off.

  “So,” he said, “I assume you resigned.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You’re not allowed to do that. You’re my student. Why did you resign?”

  “I lost a piece because I touched the wrong bishop.”

  “That’s no excuse. You keep fighting.”

  “It was so depressing.”

  “I don’t care. You have to put your whole being into chess. You can’t just say, ‘I’m tired, I’m sad, I don’t want to play today.’ That won’t get you anywhere. You keep fighting. And you’ll win. Because all the players you’re playing are lousy players, by my standards. These idiots you’re dealing with, they’ll give you a chance. Seven days a week, I’d bet that Isaac, if you kept playing your heart out, would give you a
piece back. Do you want to play like a top player? If Bobby Fischer had lost his bishop, he’d keep playing Isaac. And he’d win. My students are not allowed to resign.”

  It had been a long time since an adult had told me I wasn’t allowed to do something. The feeling was reassuring.

  “Are you playing in the rapid tournament tonight?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Don’t resign. And try to get some sleep beforehand.”

  “Okay.”

  I did not get more sleep. When I returned to the club, Finegold confronted me.

  “Did you sleep?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Ach,” he said, and threw up his hands. I headed upstairs with the other players to be assigned to a section. It was a weekly tournament, where the stakes were a small cash prize and an even smaller boost to your local reputation. We were placed in groups of four based on our rating. My quad contained an old man who was fragrantly drunk, a cheery boy of twelve, and a muscular trash-talker with wraparound shades.

  During my first game, against the kid, I immediately lost a piece. The urge to resign was almost overwhelming. But instead, I did what I learned to do with my bachelor’s degree in literature: boldly assert a bunch of nonsense. In response, he lost all his pieces. After I won, I went downstairs.

  “So how did you lose this time?” Finegold said.

  “I actually won,” I said.

  “Shocking.”

  “I didn’t resign, like you said.”

  “How did the game go?”

  “Sort of a boring queen’s pawn opening, and I immediately lost a piece, but then I started screwing with him, and tricked him into a winning endgame where I was up material.”