by Sasha Chapin
What happened at the beginning of the game?
I had the white pieces, and I played d4, as I usually do. He responded with the Gruenfeld Defense, which I didn’t particularly like playing against. But I didn’t really care. My pain and anxiety dissolved instantly as soon as he hit the clock, and it was replaced by a warm, fluid tranquility.
Tranquility?
The tranquility you get during a last fuck, or a last lap, or on the last day of a job, where the end is approaching, and you can only watch it coming, with your proverbial hands in your sweat-stained pockets. Somehow, it’s only when I am contained, in such a fashion, that I really feel free—when there is no point in resistance, when there are no alternatives, and my mind can simply resign itself to romping in the narrow province provided to it by a rapidly shrinking present moment.
What’s the Gruenfeld?
It’s a really tricky defense that a lot of people play, partially because Bobby Fischer won with it in the Game of the Century.
The Game of the Century?
Certain famously lovely chess games are given titles by the community, which are usually stately and pretentious, like the “Evergreen Game,” or the “Immortal Game.”
But why did the Game of the Century earn that title?
The thirteen-year-old Bobby Fischer, still relatively unknown, a little nerd with a radiantly wolfish smile, in a game against a much older and more experienced player, delivered an extremely picturesque checkmate after a stunning queen sacrifice—his first of many masterpieces. It was the shining moment that began his meteoric rise and tragic fall, and its biographical significance and tactical intricacy both give me chills, even though I’ve played over the game many times since I first saw it when I was seventeen.
Does chess make people go crazy in general?
Not usually. Most top chess players are pretty innocuous people. But it’s possible that chess exaggerates negative mental tendencies in an unlucky few. It certainly hasn’t had an entirely positive effect on my own sanity. Moreover, one could reflect on what was said once by early master Siegbert Tarrasch: “Mistrust is the most necessary characteristic of the chess player.”
Did Bobby Fischer have a strong sense of mistrust?
So much so that he would order orange juice on airplanes and demand it be squeezed in front of him, so he could be sure the Soviets weren’t poisoning him.
But couldn’t the Soviets have put poison in the orange with a syringe, before squeezing it?
Probably, but even Bobby Fischer had to just relax and have some orange juice sometimes.
Why did you show the Game of the Century to Katherine on your second date, after you had enjoyed a few glasses of sparkling wine together and made it up to your small, grimy apartment, after wending your way through quiet streets awash in the aqueous breeze of early May?
Because, like all new lovers, we spent all our time talking hurriedly about our passions, so that we could feel the contents of our imaginations being reborn in each other’s eyes.
How did she react?
Graciously, she nodded along as I raved for a solid hour about the intricacies of the game, and I thought that maybe this was about all I needed in life—an intelligent, compassionate woman in a sea-green gown who was somehow willing to put up with my bullshit, and a little cool air coming through a half-open window. I’d like to settle down in a moderate climate.
What did the game teach you?
That, unlike Bobby Fischer’s opponent, I should respond to the Gruenfeld cautiously.
Cautiously?
When you play the Gruenfeld, you invite the player with the white pieces to occupy the whole center of the board, and then stab at them from odd angles when they’re exposed out there. But as the white player, you don’t have to take this invitation. You can set up your pieces more modestly, as if saying to the player with the black pieces, “I’m not interested in the vivacious, electrifying battle you want to have. Let’s just sit around and do whatever.” So that’s what I did against Ronaldo.
How did Ronaldo respond to this?
With puzzlement—his large, ursine head lolled between his palms, and he licked his gums continuously, as if he were receiving transmissions from an electric device lodged in one of his molars. As we slowly maneuvered our pieces, without incident, he sank lower, until he was almost kissing his queen. He was clearly unhappy.
Why?
I wasn’t losing all of my pieces, and I wasn’t giving him any obvious path on which to proceed. There was no inherent antagonism between our forces, no clear way to gin up an attack.
Did anything ever happen, or did the game simply grind on forever?
After some shuffling, an intriguing position blossomed. We had collaborated in creating a delicate tension that might suddenly explode. Our troops stared at each other across a wide-open battlefield. His bishops, menacing and eager, eyed my hidey-holes, preventing the effective deployment of my rooks, but meanwhile, a bishop of my own threw its ominous searchlight across one of the pawns protecting his king, producing an annoying pin.
What did he do to deal with this pin?
He stepped his king out of the way of my bishop after thinking for a long, long time, and calculating all sorts of variations. This was his big mistake—it was this excessive cogitation that cost him dearly.
Isn’t thinking good, in chess?
Not necessarily. Magnus Carlsen once said that he tends to play his worst moves after a long period of thought. Also, there’s a classic saying among student chess players: “Long variation, wrong variation.” Which is to say that once you’ve developed an involuted clutter of moves in your mind, you may have come up with some novel ideas, but you’ve also increased the chance of making a miscalculation, by dint of the sheer number of calculations you’ve made. So, rather than play a move with complex consequences that have to be precisely traced, it’s often better to play a good, simple, clean move.
There are classic sayings in chess?
Many. Like, “When you see a good move, look for a better one,” said by early chess master Emanuel Lasker. Or the witticism of another player of that era, Savielly Tartakower: “The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.”
Which classic chess saying described what happened next?
LPDO—“Loose pieces drop off.” A “loose” piece is one that’s sitting around the board without the protection of another. It’s risky to have a lot of loose pieces sitting around, because they often fall victim to tactical blows. Especially, as it turns out, in a game against a lower-rated player with an odd smell, in a hotel in the far reaches of the San Fernando Valley, a few miles from desert mountains covered with flowering bushes.
Oh yeah?
Yes. Ronaldo, when he moved his king, exposed himself to a simple double attack—my queen could shuffle to the side and attack both his king and bishop at once. His bishop was mine. It was a rookie mistake. After I spotted the tactic and made the move, Ronaldo stared at the board in disbelief, stared at me in disbelief, and resigned in disgust. He then, in silence, showed me the moves he’d expected me to make, and walked swiftly from the hall, head low, torso flexed, as if he was nursing a sudden cardiac episode, which he may well have been.
How did it feel to beat a higher-rated player as a result of a stupid blunder?
I would’ve liked to have won with a feat of ingenuity, remembered eternally by chess scholars, celebrated by widows, children, and captains of industry alike, resulting in a fame so ubiquitous that household brands like Cuisinart and Hitachi would approach me for endorsement deals. But this was still pretty good. Also, it struck me as dramatically appropriate, after a fashion. My first chess tournament began with my losing to a superior opponent because I made an idiotic blunder. Now, more than a year later, after all of my stupidity, my last chess tournament began with a similar sort of game, except that this time the victory was mine.
How did the little Boston terrier at the residence where you were staying during the
tournament react to your victory, after you returned?
She wanted to play fetch. I thought that this was as suitable a celebration as any. Then, she listened as I told her about the game and scratched her short head. We really connected on an emotional level.
Did you sleep well that night, even though you were shot full of the bright, acidic feeling of adrenaline, shaped by a mixture of triumph and melancholy?
I did not.
Did you underestimate the amount of food that would arrive when you ordered a deluxe breakfast at a diner the next morning, on the way to the tournament hall?
I did, and the flapjacks loomed on my plate, gigantic and uneaten, as I walked away.
Who was your next game against?
Darwin Mazzarelli, the highest-rated player of the division, weighing in at 2040, whose brown shirt was rumpled, and whose curly hair was spraying outwards with vehemence. He approached the table breezily, almost at a jog, ten minutes late, and smirking lightly at everything, as if the world around him was merely an accessory to some infinitely diverting private joke.
What did he think of you?
I couldn’t tell. He was undisturbed by my presence. He seemed like a man entirely at peace with himself. I wanted to hold his hand and somehow absorb his gentle, warm aura. But this wasn’t some sort of daffy New Age therapy session. I had to beat him at chess. “Nice to meet you,” he said, and then made his first move.
What was the beginning of the game like?
Sometimes, if I fall asleep with a mind full of detritus, there’s a certain dream I have. I’m walking in a beautiful desert, amid scattered acacias, in the moment just before twilight, when a soft, agreeable breeze is palpating every surface. Without hurry, I approach the empty horizon, and I am completely tranquil, my mind a shining surface. But just as I relax fully, I become dimly aware that I’m meeting someone here, in this landscape—someone who has been following me, for hours, days, for my entire life. And I realize that I don’t like him very much. Actually, what I realize is that I’m afraid of him, because I should be. I’ve managed to outrun him for a long time, but that’s all over now. He’s found me, and he’s getting closer. Now, he’s just over the hill behind me. He’s very fast. He can cross long distances in a vanishingly small amount of time. In fact, he’s just a few yards away. And I’m too terrified to see exactly what he looks like, when I unwisely turn around, but I understand that he’s a tall, handsome tormentor, perhaps an instantiation of Satan himself, the great deluder, filled with a malicious confidence that is entirely earned. In that moment, as he reaches out to touch me, I begin to scream, but my mouth is dry, and my tongue is slow, as if made of cold molasses. Then I wake up.
But, like, what does that mean in chess terms?
After what seemed like a harmless series of opening moves, I drifted into a hateful position that I was scared of. Accidentally, I found myself playing the Tarrasch Defense, a risky system for the black pieces.
Why is the Tarrasch so bad?
It’s really not. But it leads to a position full of double-edged danger. The player with the black pieces—i.e., me—ends up with an isolated center pawn, which is, in chess, the equivalent of being lightly armored: unencumbered, but also vulnerable. The lack of an obstructing pawn shield lets your pieces dance around merrily, but if you’re not careful, that isolated pawn can be captured, leaving you with nothing. And against a more skilled opponent, I didn’t think that was a good situation.
Did the game immediately end in disaster?
No. Because, yet again, I played small, neutral moves, simply trying to ward off threats, like a dancer on a log. Essentially, I tried to put the ball in Darwin’s court, risking nothing, saying, “Okay, come get me, you gentle prince.” And, like my previous opponent, Darwin reacted to this with brimming effort, looking for some sort of lightning bolt he could throw at me. But he couldn’t find anything.
Even though he had a superior position, after he slowly outplayed you over the first twenty moves?
Yes. We were playing for an accumulation of small advantages. And he had a couple, but nothing so dramatic that he could wipe me out instantly. Nevertheless, he was trying to find ways to end the game immediately. There weren’t any, so he was using up all of his time. By the time we reached a complex middle-game, he had ten minutes left on the clock, and I had a comfortable forty.
And what did he fail to notice, as his clock continued ticking, as he gripped his curly hair, his evenly congenial manner now replaced with a steely, jolly focus, a stiff smile spreading across his face?
That while he was taking my center pawn—the event that should have provoked the collapse of my whole position—I was spinning up my own tricks on the other side of the board. To Darwin’s dismay, I was engaging in what Germans call Gegenspiel: the creation of a minor chaos that risks making a twist in the game’s overall narrative.
Like what?
I managed to snip off one of the pawns on his flank, and in doing so, opened up a long, pleasant lane down which one of my own pawns could promenade. And it did, immediately. It skipped up towards the far end of the board, getting ready to queen, with all the pluck and hope of a happy puppy on a mission. If Darwin didn’t stop it, he would lose to the lowest-rated player in the bracket, whom nobody had ever heard of, who smelled like the exquisite secretions of a long-extinct breed of rodent.
Did that happen?
No. He stopped it. But, at that point, stopping it required the coordination of the only two of his pieces that remained after we’d traded all the others—a queen and a bishop, lined up in a powerful battery. Meaning that he couldn’t do anything. He just couldn’t move at all. However, being a clever man, he had arranged his queen and bishop so that they were also threatening my king, meaning that my own bishop couldn’t move unless I wanted to get checkmated instantly. I was paralyzed as much as he was. We were locked in a mutual chokehold, our threats held in a delicate counterpoise, where if either of us did anything other than shuffle our pieces around uselessly, we would lose instantly.
The game was a draw?
It was. He poked at the position with his pieces for a little bit to see if I would do something crazy, but I refused to. We were locked in place. I had held off the most powerful player in my division.
Were you happy about this?
Irrepressibly, intolerably. After I shook Darwin’s hand, and we nodded with apparent mutual respect, I ran outside and started skipping around the parking lot. My intention was to shake the ground with such force that all of Los Angeles County would feel my immensity.
Even though you didn’t win, and your goal of beating a 2000-ranked player was still unfulfilled?
If you’d told anybody watching my first tournament game, in Bangkok, that I’d be able to slowly grind out a draw against a 2050-rated player, in a game in which neither of us blundered, they would choke on their milk. Even if they didn’t have milk in their mouths. They would go find milk to choke on, perhaps sesame soy milk, just to be able to express their disbelief adequately.
And how did your joyful reverie continue?
It didn’t. Because I knew that if I brought my joy into the next game, I would lose immediately. Joy was relaxation, and relaxation was death, and death was to be avoided, if at all possible. Instead, I ate spicy huevos rancheros at the place across the street. Then I crossed back over the sunbaked six-lane road, and sat down alone in a corner of the lobby, attempting to feel normal.
What did Darwin say, when you ran into him on the way to checking the pairings for the next round?
“You’ve achieved very respectable results so far. Especially for your rating.”
“Thank you. Usually I don’t play well, but I decided to play well.”
“It’s that simple, huh?”
“Maybe. I don’t really know. I’m just trying to play boring chess.”
“We presume we know a lot about ourselves, but I think we live in ignorance.”
“In chess?”
“In life. Good luck in the next round.”
He clasped my shoulder for a moment, fraternally, and then walked off towards the tournament hall. After looking at his back for a moment, I followed him through the narrow doors into the carpeted expanse and found my opponent.
Who was he?
Jack Cheng, a nervous-looking twelve-year-old.
Why were you unhappy to play a young opponent?
Because children tend to play crazy, complicated chess, which was the right approach to take with me, given that my intention was to try to keep the game as simple and uninspiring as possible. Jack, I imagined, was going to force me into the complications I wanted to avoid, into the kind of fun I’d rather not have. If he was like most children, Jack was going to go for hasty attacks that would be easily dealt with by a grandmaster, but which would befuddle me, given that I was very easily befuddled.
Why do children play in such a fashion?
The minds of children are scattered and cavalier. They see far and fast with their slick new untrammeled cortices. But they’re also impatient, eager to achieve triumph or simply any outcome at all. They play with high emotion, always attacking, as opposed to engaging in the flintiness usually displayed by truly high-level players, whose maniacal urges are suppressed. Children can see a checkmating attack ten moves away, but they display little aptitude for the slow, pedantic trundle of a nettle-some endgame. This is why players usually reach their peak between twenty and thirty-five: they reach an optimal combination of youthful agility and maturity. (After that, a slow decline tends to occur.)
