Stephen Davies - Chessboxer

Also by Stephen Davies

Blood & Ink

Hacking Timbuktu

Outlaw

The Yellowcake Conspiracy

This edition first published in 2019 by

Andersen Press Limited

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road

London SW1V 2SA

www.andersenpress.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

The right of Stephen Davies to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Text copyright Stephen Davies, 2019

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

ISBN 978 1 78761 185 6

Play the opening like a book
Play the middlegame like a magician
Play the endgame like a machine

Rudolf Spielmann, grandmaster

PART ONE: OPENING

A single exposure to chess is enough to make an addict of anyone with a sense of adventure

Edward Lasker (18851981)

PART TWO: MIDDLEGAME

When I am White I win because I am White.
When I am Black I win because I am Bogoljubov.

Efim Bogoljubov (18891952)

PART THREE: ENDGAME

Every pawn is a potential queen

James Mason (18491905)

HELLO WORLD

My name is Leah aka Chessgirl and this is my first post. Im blogging for me, not for you, so if you dont like what I write, just move on. You wont be missed.

My life is a moldy cake with five ingredients.

1. Playing chess
2. Staying in hotels
3. Getting yelled at by Mom
4. Getting yelled at by Coach
5. Running, swimming, skipping and shadow-boxing

Im in India at the moment, not that Ive seen much of it. Im cooped up in a hotel, playing at the Pune Open Tournament. By the end of Day Two Ive got three wins from three games and Coach starts saying I have a good chance of winning the whole thing.

Day Three, and Im up against an old Belgian grandmaster with the biggest forehead Ive ever seen. Im not kidding, its big enough for four people. I open on the queenside and play the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit just for the hell of it, watching that big ol forehead crease up into a thousand furrows. I go on to smash him in thirty-five moves.

As soon as I get out of the playing hall, Mom starts getting mad at me, yelling like a freak on a leash. She tells me she didnt fly us halfway around the world for me to play half-baked openings. Then its Coachs turn, bawling me out for disrespecting Belgiums top grandmaster. He tells me I was deliberately staring at the guys forehead to put him off. In my defense, I tell him, there was hardly any space in the playing hall NOT occupied by that forehead. Coach doesnt even crack a smile. Play the board, Leah, not the man, he mutters, which everyone knows is bull. Its not the board that wants to rip your head off and have it for dinner, is it? Anyways, look at the numbers. Four rounds, four wins, and my rating has gone up eighteen points already. Youd think theyd be happy. After all, Im their creation.

COMMENTS

Roy: I like the occasional game of chess but I dont really understand this post. Whats a Blackmar-Diemer Gambit? Please be clearer.

Chessgirl: What can I tell you, Roy? Im an IM (international master) soon to be a GM (grandmaster) and it sounds like youre a patzer. I could play you blindfold with rook odds and thirty seconds on my clock and still take you apart. Im not explaining the BDG to patzers. Thats not what this blog is for. Clear enough for you?

Guppy: You dont sound like a very nice person, Chessgirl. And fyi, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit has been proven unsound. GM Cornelius Hammett says that anyone who plays the BDG in a tourno might as well climb onto the chessboard and ritually disembowel himself.

Chessgirl: Did Hammett say that before or after I beat him with Blackmar-Diemer at the Gibraltar Tradewise tournament back in 2011 when I was like ELEVEN YEARS OLD? Only one person got gutted that day and it wasnt me.

Socrates: You got a boyfriend?

Chessgirl: Drink hemlock, Socrates. Or go into exile. Your call.

Roy: Why are you so up yourself? Do you think people are going to read your blog if you insult your fellow chess players and everyone who comments?

Chessgirl: Douche.

Comments on this post are now closed.

50 THINGS ABOUT ME

1. The name Leah derives from the Hebrew word for weary.
2. I dont have a middle name. If I did, I would want a Dont Mess With Me middle name like Scout or Jade.
3. I live with my mother on the first floor of an apartment block in Manhattan, New York.
4. I am seventeen years old. Just.
5. My birthday is April Fools Day. Thats right, my very existence is an April Fools joke.
6. My dad is an engineer on the International Space Station. It takes him an hour and a half to orbit the Earth. He sees sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets every day.
7. Im nothing like my dad. Im scared of flying, which is bad because I have to travel by plane ALL THE TIME.
8. Im scared of heights as well.
9. I found that out when I stayed at the JW Marriott Marquis hotel in Dubai. My room was on the sixty-ninth floor. I ended up sleeping behind a couch down in the hotel lobby.
10. I beat my first grandmaster when I was six years old. After the game he claimed he had toothache and wasnt thinking straight.
11. Beating a GM at chess is an amazing feeling. When he knocks his king over you feel a thrill that travels down your whole body and out through your toes.
12. I gave my first simultaneous chess exhibition when I was ten. I played forty strong club players. Won thirty, drew nine, lost one.
13. I got really mad about the one I lost. I thumped a pillar so hard I broke my hand.
14. Intelligence and irritability are a bad combination.
15. I once yelled Why am I losing to this idiot?! during a tournament game in Milan. I got an official reprimand from the referee but I went on to win the game. And the tournament.
16. My cell phone ringtone is an mp3 of Bobby Fischer saying I love the moment when I crush a mans ego.
17. I hate being asked whether there will ever be a female world chess champion. Of course there will.
18. Mom and Coach are convinced its going to be me.
19. Today my chess rating is 2480. When I get to 2500 I will be a grandmaster.
20. When Im studying chess positions at home I wear my crocodile onesie. Ive had it for years. I cut the feet off so I wouldnt outgrow it.
21. One of my videos on YouTube has over a million hits: two GMs accidentally clashing heads over a chessboard, then cussing in Russian.
22. My best friend is called Rybka. We play chess together every day.
23. Rybka is a computer chess program.
24. My last boyfriend was Sergey, a Russian IM with floppy bangs. We started dating at the World Junior Championship three years ago.
25. He was my first boyfriend as well as my last.
26. I learnt dozens of obscure Russian proverbs to impress him with.
27. Shouldnt have bothered.
28. Now I have a rule about not dating chess players.
29. Id break that rule for the right person.
30. I took my AP exams when I was sixteen. Aced them, obviously.