by Sasha Chapin
How did the game begin?
With a limp handshake—he was socially awkward in a young, cute way, and couldn’t look me in the eyes. And then, he played the Gruenfeld. I watched, amused, as our first eight moves duplicated, exactly, my first-round game with Ronaldo.
Does that happen a lot?
All the time. All over the world, chess players are doing the same things, over and over again.
In spite of the fact that chess is an infinite game?
Yes. Chess is both infinite and somewhat predictable. If that confuses you, think about chess as a walk in an endless forest. At the beginning of the game, the players enter the forest together, through a grand gate, and walk down one of a few well-worn paths that have been created by the footfalls of many fellow travelers—sequences of sensible moves that have been played many times before. But as they walk further through the trees, the paths split, and split again, each time becoming narrower, as their route becomes less popular and thus cleared by fewer footfalls. And beyond a certain distance, they lose their way, moving off the courses followed thousands of times by others. They find themselves alone in a splintering space of permutations.
And once you were alone, on your own path, what occurred?
Jack, as predicted, threw his pieces at mine with zeal, in a way that rattled me, although I tried not to show it. I flexed my lips slightly so that they wouldn’t tremble. His knights tap-danced all over me, falling deep into the weak spots in my position, locking me down so tightly that I felt like marrow trapped in a bone.
Did this equestrian assault finish you off?
Not quite. I wriggled, and jiggled, and, by hook or by crook, managed to untangle my pieces and tickle his knights, sending them back into the empty tract in the center of the board.
And did he try to make the position complicated, once again?
Yes. But I didn’t let him. Like a recalcitrant porcupine, I remained curled and comfortable behind my barbs. There was no progress to be made—at least not by a young player of moderate caliber with apple cheeks.
How did he respond to this?
He just threw his pieces around with no apparent goal. They somersaulted back and forth, all movement but no action. He was baiting me. I was baiting him. Nobody bit. Our pieces came off the board, pair by pair, as if escorting each other to some gala. Eventually, there was nothing going on. Our kings sat across from each other on an empty board. It was an easy draw.
Two draws in a row?
Yes, and I was completely happy with that. A draw is a fine outcome, especially against superior players. Plus, as Finegold mentioned, chess is a draw if played perfectly.
Your game was perfectly played?
No, it was a clumsy ratfuck by grandmaster standards. But it was as good as the two of us could possibly do.
And then you left the hotel, and took a cab back to your lodging, and lay down in bed, and looked up at the ceiling?
And then closed my eyes, and felt a tingle disperse outwards from my thorax, a sense of love without object, until I lost track of the size of my body, feeling my toes carve an astronomical vastness by its joints when I flexed my feet. And I thought, “That is the crux of the biscuit,” and vibrated deliriously, until sleep covered it all over.
On Sunday, the final day of both the tournament and your chess career, did you keep proceeding flawlessly, without a loss, demonstrating that achieving chess mastery isn’t so hard after all, and that it simply requires a slight modification in disposition, achievable by any simpleton who is so minded?
No.
Why not?
The fourth player, the vengeful child named Miles Cheong.
Vengeful?
His aspect was sinister. His brow was permanently bunched. His mouth had settled in a smirk. He stuck out his chin in an attempt to be intimidating, which worked. When he shook my hand, his was bladelike and rigid. And he played the Dutch Defense, the choice of uncompromising players, who aren’t happy with drawing the game.
What does Ben Finegold say about the Dutch Defense?
“It’s not as bad as its reputation! It’s not as bad as its results! You should play the Dutch against me!” He meant this sarcastically. Many grandmasters have a dim view of the Dutch, because it involves moving the pawns in front of your king immediately. You take a stab at your opponent’s central position right at the beginning, with little regard for your own long-term survival.
Did this make your game all the more humiliating?
Yes.
How did it go?
Painfully, right away. Miles didn’t brook my attempts to be boring. He swept his pawns down the board immediately, bringing the game to a sharp precipice. His play was dubious, in that if I survived his attack, his king would be as naked as a raindrop. But he wanted to disrespect me, to spit in my face, to shove his tentacles right down my nostrils. He wanted to both razzle and dazzle me. And I was, indeed, puzzled. I couldn’t figure out how to repel his advance.
Did you try?
I regarded the board and tried to grasp all of the potential complications. But it was a messy situation, and teasing out the possibilities felt like eating spaghetti with a clothespin. My tired mind shrank from the task, and besieged me with a spume of miscellaneous information. Chess is mentally strange, sometimes, in the same way that meditation is: When you stop moving and try to focus, your mind is hosed by bullshit from the inside. You’re filled with recipes for pavlova, and the name of the capital of Burkina Faso, and the apparition of a morning you can’t quite remember. It all comes back—all of those tiny scraps and figments saved by your memory for no reason at all. This does not help your chess. My clock was running down. I made a move. It was bad.
How bad?
It didn’t stop his forces from crashing down the board and murdering all of my pieces. He destroyed me. He showed me who the boss was. He raided my fridge. He roasted my turkey. I was checkmated in short order. My second-last game of chess ever—just like that.
How did it feel?
Kind of exhilarating, like when you’re filled with adrenaline following a spanking. I was high on defeat. Mostly, I wanted a cigarette. Or maybe I could sit down and have a glass of cold water in an empty room, on another planet where I was the only inhabitant, and laugh and tell the walls my secrets. But I had one last game to play.
Did you feel anything in particular?
I was feeling too much to feel any of it. My heart was thumping like a suicidal toad hurling itself against my ribcage. Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t quite remember. It’s a little like recalling drunkenness from sobriety. I remember that I was there, and that I was facing down my last game of chess, ever. This was going to be goodbye, and I certainly wasn’t ready. Of course, I wasn’t legally bound to chess abstinence, at this point. Maybe I would go back to the board one day. I hoped not. But I also hoped so. Hope was beside the point, anyway. There was checkmating to do.
Who were you playing?
Oliver Chiang, a young boy of perhaps fourteen, with large, sensitive eyes and charmingly stubby fingers. I liked him right away. I don’t know why exactly. I just felt a sense of mammalian familiarity. I would’ve felt safe with him if we were two gibbons meeting around the watering hole. As I shook his hand, he smiled faintly, exposing big square teeth like polished granite chiclets. He seemed sad and exhausted. Of course, it’s possible that I was sad and exhausted, and thus read my own emotions in his face. This is what they call “typical mind fallacy,” the tendency to believe that others have an interiority similar to yours—that, for example, Oliver Chiang felt as exhausted in his adolescence as I did in mine.
Did he seem anxious about the fact that his mother was looming, tall and expressionless, vaguely avian in elegant heels, a couple of feet away, fixing you both in an unceasing gaze?
He didn’t seem entirely pleased about it—after the first two moves of the game, he looked back at her, perhaps reaching out for some kind of signal of perfunctory maternal encouragement, but she d
idn’t respond, perhaps not wanting to coddle him. She strode in semicircles the whole game, remaining attentive and cryptic.
What shape did the game take in its early stages?
We began by moving into the French Defense, my old friend, of which Wilhelm Steinitz once said, “I have never in my life played the French Defense, which is the dullest of all openings.” I generally agree with him. It’s a dull opening, involving the creation of a little hook of pawns that lock in your pieces for ages while you devise some maneuver. But it’s the one I chose often throughout my life in chess. I was fond of its enigmatic nature—it can twist off in all kinds of crazy directions, although it can also result in tame, stale positions. Regardless, it was far too late now to turn back and live a more exciting life. After a few moves, we arrived at the solid Tarrasch Variation, which is eminently playable for both sides.
Wait, why is everything named after Siegbert Tarrasch?
Because he’s old. Back when he was alive, there was a lot to discover, and he discovered a whole bunch of it and slapped his name on all of it, being a somewhat arrogant man. Chess was a less-discovered country; its weather wasn’t quite as charted as it is now. Now, in the present day, because so many brilliant chess players have lived and died, there are fewer earth-shaking discoveries to be had on the board.
And what kind of position developed?
A delicate balance full of hidden hostility. Like a freshly frozen puddle, everything looked solid on the surface, but would crack and gush with the application of any force whatsoever. Neither player had a safe or sure way forward. The pawns in the center, which comprised the board’s binding architecture, were very weak.
Why did Oliver start vigorously rubbing his eyes, in a way that was faintly alarming, as if he were going to gouge them out at any moment?
If I might engage in the typical mind fallacy for a moment once again, I’d imagine he was just fed up. He wasn’t having the best tournament. He had lost a couple of games. He had maybe disappointed his mother, and would possibly face emotional recrimination. This game might have offered a chance to prove himself once again, but now, like most of my other opponents, he was faced with unexpected difficulty. He just wanted to be left alone, and looked close to tears. I pitied him, and I wanted to give him a big hug.
And did he despair more and more as you quietly expanded your position, ratcheting up the tension, taking tiny amounts of space away from his pieces?
Yes.
And when he offered you a draw, prematurely, when the position was more or less equal, did you take it?
It was tempting. Drawing Oliver would mean I’d finish the tournament with a 50 per cent record: three draws, one win, one loss. That would be an uninspiring but acceptable finish for a 2000-rated player in the division, but for a 1390-rated player like me, it would be like I’d invented a technique for curing cancer with a toothpick.
What stopped you?
I was going to see this thing out. Oliver had no way of knowing this, but he was a profoundly consequential figure, and I wouldn’t be happy with anything except a decisive result—a win or a loss. Chess would either give me a kiss goodbye or spit in my face and tell me to get the fuck out of its sight.
How did that go?
I pressed on. After some more maneuvering, the position had gone completely cold. There was no action whatsoever. The board had all the narrative excitement of a phonebook. But I combed the squares for some bit of chaos, trying to induce a mistake, or to locate the seed of some crescendo. My bishops scissored about. His rooks perambulated. He was suffering inside. His face, already paper-white, was paling further. Something was giving way inside him.
What was the tone in his voice like when he offered you another draw?
Quavering and high-pitched. He wanted to be in the sun, far away, in a place that required nothing.
Did you take his draw?
No. It was more tempting the second time around. But the voice of Finegold joined my own interior monologue—he had told me once never to take an early draw. “What if I reject a draw offer and lose?” I said, at the time. “I’ve lost more games than you’ve ever played,” he responded, dismissively.
What did you do when Oliver’s play became a little sloppy, allowing your pieces to gain access to the depths of his territory?
I went on in there. It was pleasant. There was a lot of room for me. His pieces didn’t have a lot of space to maneuver, but mine did, and they found all the best squares. After some material was traded, I was in a much superior endgame, with a menacing pawn bearing down on his back ranks, supported by a powerful bishop.
You were winning?
Not quite. But he was presented with a tricky task. It was sort of like an interrogation. He had to answer a number of very serious questions faultlessly. And all I had to do was sit back and talk, and slowly grind him down. Without an absolutely virtuosic performance by him, in the absence of any major screw-ups by me, it would be over.
When he sank further and further into his chair, casting desultory glances both at you and occasionally back at his mother, what was the thought that crossed your mind?
That he seemed to be growing younger and younger.
Did you press on, moving that menacing pawn of yours up the board, continuing the slow squeeze?
Yes, and tears lurked behind his eyes and threatened to fall. I almost couldn’t bear it. I wanted to tell him it was going to be okay. That, unlike me, he had a lot more chess games to play, and his whole adolescence still to set aflame, and then his twenties, during which he might live to traipse around Bangkok, or Nepal, or just find a series of rooms to occupy with a series of people. This moment, in retrospect, would shrink. It was barely relevant. In his memory, I wouldn’t even be a secondary character. I’d be a tertiary sub-memory, with a face he could only faintly remember, if at all: an indistinct fog that he might recall and reinterpret two or three times before he died.
So were you thankful when, after about sixty-five moves had been played, he made the mistake of moving his king into a funny position, enabling you to land a wonderful move that you saw instantly—a stunning blow that would end the game immediately?
I was elated. It was the kind of move you dream of playing: strange-looking at first, but in reality simple and beautiful. By sending my menacing pawn to its immediate death, I’d uncage my bishop, allowing it to slice through his position and eat everything up.
But didn’t Finegold tell you never to sacrifice?
Yes. But in every variation, I was winning easily. I sat there and calculated and recalculated. Plus, wouldn’t it be wonderful to go out with a brilliant sacrifice? With a little tactical marvel, demonstrating how far I’d advanced? Everything dovetailed towards a momentary perfection of my life. I wrote “e6!” on my scorecard and reached up to make the move.
Why the exclamation point?
Chess players annotate games with punctuation marks. A single question mark indicates an inaccuracy. A double question mark is a game-losing blunder. On the other hand, an exclamation mark is doled out to excellent moves, and occasionally a double exclamation is given to scintillating brilliancies. When you’re narrating a game and you’re saying the moves out loud, and you come across a move that’s so punctuated, you say “exclam,” pronounced like you’re referring to a former bivalve. I always really liked this, and the concept of “exclam” contaminated my non-chess mental life—occasionally I would find myself annotating a nice sunset, or the pretty face of a stranger, or the sound of wind on a snowy evening, in such a fashion. Exclam. e6! That was how it would end.
And how did Oliver Chiang respond to your exclamatory move?
He considered e6! for a moment, looked up at me doubtfully, and, in seconds, played the simple refutation, which turned my extremely favorable position into a losing game immediately. It was a perfect riposte. He smiled, a little abashedly.
How did you respond to that?
With a smile of appreciation, and wounded laughter. I
could’ve resigned right then, but I played out the rest of the game blandly, trying to put up something of a fight. But I didn’t really have any fight left in me, and there wasn’t a fight in the position. His king just strode around, taking all my pawns, while mine chased after it uselessly. Now, Oliver had grown out of the temporary infancy into which he had plunged, seeming like a commanding young man, full of gravitas and energy, and I felt very, very old.
And what did you and Oliver say, after he checkmated you, twenty elementary moves later?
“You could’ve won,” he said, somewhat in disbelief.
“I know,” I said.
“You were playing really well. If you made any other move I’d be dead.”
“It’s okay.”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks for the game.”
We shook hands.
Was it actually okay?
Sure. In the same way that it was okay that all human affairs come to nothing, eventually. It was okay because it had to be. My chess career ended with an unsound sacrifice, refuted by a child. He walked away happy and tired. I was pleased to have pleased him.
* * *
In a few minutes, my Uber driver, Natasha, picked me up from the parking lot in front of the hotel. She was lovely, asking me, “Where you goin’, baby?” even though her GPS clearly told her where I was going. I had rented a little room by the ocean. Not because I wanted, now that chess was over, to jump in the waves and never be seen again, although that image had occurred to me. I just felt like I deserved to see some pretty water—some celebrated, high-quality California water—while it was available. I had come this far. Why not go a little further?
