Sasha Chapin - All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir about Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything

Perhaps the surest sign that youre in love is that you cant stop talking. You find yourself announcing the name of your beloved at the slightest provocation. Given any opportunity, you engage in a vain attempt to explain your infatuation. Everything else seems unworthy of a single moments attention or discussion. No matter how shy or stoic you are, real affection demands expression.

And this is no less true when the object of your affection is the game of chess. In other words, when youre me.

But this poses a bit of a problem. Its tricky to explain the appeal of chess to someone who doesnt play. Unlike the beauty of other sports, the majesty of chess is somewhat opaque to the uninitiated. Basketball, Im sure, has infinitesimal subtleties I cant fully appreciate, but when Im watching a game, I can still sense that LeBron is doing something really cool. The sheer physicality is imposingthe taut calves, the curves carved in the air by the ball meeting the basket. Not so with chess. All you do is look at two nerds staring at a collection of tiny figurines.

And yet, my love of chess demands that I continue, that I somehow communicate why chess captivates me in ways that nothing else ever could. Why Ive neglected food, sex, and friendship, on many an occasion, for its charms. Why nothingnot love, not amphetamines, not physical dangermakes my heart beat harder than the process of cornering an opponents king.

If you think this is crazy, I agree. But it deserves mentioning that Im not the only crazy one. Albert Einstein and Humphrey Bogart were similarly affected by the thirty-two pieces on the sixty-four squares. And, some centuries before that, Caliph Muhammad al-Amin, ruler of the Abbasid empire, insisted on continuing a promising endgame as marauders penetrated his throne room, decapitating him shortly after he delivered checkmate.

I didnt get decapitated, so my affair with chess really wasnt so bad. All I got was the total consumption of my soul.

Like so many affairs, it began with an accidental flirtation that became an all-devouring uniontwo years during which I did little else but pursue chess mastery. Despite my obvious lack of talent, I leapt across continents to play in far-flung competitions, studied with an eccentric grandmaster, spent almost all of my money, neglected my loved ones, and accumulated a few infections. And I did it all for a brief shot at glorya chance to take down some real players at a tournament in Los Angeles, where my place in humanity was determined, as far as Im concerned.

Maybe if you come back with me, through those nights of chasing imaginary kings with imaginary queens, along my winding road to the San Fernando Valley, youll understand my love of chess. Maybe youll even understand why, according to recent estimates, one in twelve people in the world plays chess in some capacity. Maybe youd like to know whats been captivating well over 600 million souls while you were doing whatever you do.

Frankly, I didnt feel like I was doing much until chess came along. Sure, there were momentary rages, dwindling loves, and, occasionally, a charming vista. But it was all part of an unformed sequence of anecdotes, through which I was stumbling sideways, grasping at whatever I could, whether it was some form of self-destruction or a nice afternoon walk. By contrast, when chess appeared, it felt like a possessionlike a spirit had slipped a long finger up through my spine, making me a marionette, pausing only briefly to ask, You werent doing anything with this, were you?

KATHMANDU

Anyway, like most people, I became obsessed with chess after I ran away to Asia with a stripper Id just met.

Courtney made an impression. Before I saw her face, at the poetry reading where we encountered each other, I heard the precise, cutting melody of her voice sailing above the rooms otherwise meek murmurs. And as soon as I saw her, it became clear, from both the way she looked and the way that everyone else looked at her, that she was the unelected supervisor of that evening. She had one of those sharp smiles that you could easily imagine encircling the necks of her enemies. She was slim and pale, with severe good looks. Everything she wore was obviously expensive: shiny black boots, shiny black pants, and an extravagantly fluffy white sweater that shed hairs everywhere. The room around her slowly became dandered.

Even before we spoke, her presence added a little bit of much-needed electricity to the otherwise un-fascinating evening. The poetry reading was boring. And I went there knowing I would be bored, because I didnt care about experimental poetry. But I figured that I should go for vague professional reasons. I had recently started a career as a freelance writer, having published a couple of sensitive essays that had earned modest local acclaim. And in my mind this meant, somehow, that attending tedious literary events was now my sacred responsibility.

She and I met when I started flirting with a friend of hers, whose social pleasantness I mistakenly took for some sort of invitation. Courtney saved me from embarrassment by swooping in and derailing the conversation with an avalanche of pointed queries and cleverly backhanded compliments. At first, I had no idea whether she liked me or could even tolerate my presence. She seemed entirely self-contained, like there wasnt anything I could possibly add to her life, which may have been true. I asked her what she thought of the poetry, expecting a mushy statement of reverence of the sort Id received from everyone else Id asked that question.