An Incomplete List of People Who Have Beaten Me at Chess
Nick O’Brien
If you play a game long enough, it will come to you in hallucinations. I have floated in limbo on the edge of sleep and seen half-dreamed apparitions of dancing chess pieces, the residue of a dozen-game afternoon, of a day spent feasting upon the infinities contained in 64 squares. A bishop darted across the back of my eyelids, and I woke the next morning anxious and in search, once again, of a board. No game can be more agonizing to lose than a game that does that to you.
And so I write this in tribute to those who have inflicted that agony on me – to the friends and hustlers, the internet avatars and meetup attendees.
This tribute is to Astrid, who squatted over the board on the floor between us, feigning modesty about her skill level before forking my queen and king with a side-stepping knight that had been lurking on the fringes. And to Eric, my coworker at DaVinci’s Pizza, and his half-tacky blue-and-white frosted glass set, on which his bishop turned my all-powerful queen into a meek human shield to be felled in futile protection of my doomed king.
To Corey, a true chess predator, one of those guys who feed off blitz, who spend their time between chess sessions waiting, hunting, for the next one. Corey saw the ad for the chess meetup I started with Mark at Cafe La Victoria, strode in one night, and ravaged us like a cheetah killing a fawn, checkmating us, forcing our resignations, winning on time. And for that matter, to Mark, with whom I’d play on the back patio of the Sycamore on Mission Street, sipping Tecate and entertaining the befuddling notion that chess skills would make women want to talk to us.
To the players in the parks of our cities, and the $3 stakes they demand for each game. In my first game in Washington Square Park, my opponent let me take white and open pawn-to-e4, then smothered me into the corner of the board and left me with my head in my hands. As the clock ran down, I realized my wager on the outcome had been no wager at all; it had been a $3 fee tendered for the privilege of losing.
While we’re on the topic of New York: I responded, years ago, to an online call for teachers at Chess Wizards, an after-school program in the city’s PS system. I took the bus into the city and walked to a midtown coffee shop to meet my interviewer, a Slavic woman with an angular haircut who brought a chess set to test my bona fides. While dismantling my army, she finally, casually, got to the buried lede: Would I be comfortable teaching chess dressed head to toe in a wizard costume, staff and all? I didn’t take the job. This is a tribute to her, too.
And to Sudama, the cafe owner in Ecuador who served Javi and me our drinks on the patio, noticed our game, and returned 20 minutes later to destroy us both with relentless precision and efficiency. And to the handsome, aloof young Belgian man I played with at dusk outside a beach resort in Mancora, Peru, who advanced his pawn steadily, inexorably toward my end of the board and promotion to Queen, me looking on in agony, powerless to stop him. “It’s part of the game,” he said flatly – by way of a balm, I guess – as I cursed and flailed.
To the faceless players online, of whom I know nothing other than that they’re lethal with a knight and a rook, who have kept my rating from rising any farther than 1330. To my brother, whom I used to consistently beat and who now consistently beats me.
To my father, who taught me chess at age 7 and has been beating me ever since. In 1972, he and a friend set up a board and played along with the World Championship match when Fischer took the title from Spassky and was catapulted, briefly, to the annals of Cold War heroism. Dad and Dave recreated the games as each move was announced over the radio, studying them, and if I ever beat him, all these decades later, it will be my own private championship.
Because it’s never good to be too self-deprecating, I’ll make room in this tribute for the kid in that one online game, years ago. “I’m 12,” he said in the chat box the moment our game began. “I’m 12 and I’m gonna win. I’m gonna beat you and I’m only 12.” I mopped the floor with that little twerp, Ruy Lopez and mate just a few moves later. But with his gumption, he might make it on this list if we played again today.
To Marvin and the other Market and Mason chess players, whom I visited when I’d just arrived in California and had no one else to play with. Marvin would sag in his wheelchair, half asleep, plastic Takka vodka bottle in hand, and awaken briefly to doom me with a swift Queen attack – a machete slash, an arrow to the heart – in response to a move I wasn’t even sure he’d been awake to see me make. He’d slur trash talk throughout, but always offered his hand after I resigned. Years have passed since the forces of gentrification scattered the Market and Mason players. Still, I think of them every time I pass that corner.
It is the truths these players have shown me that make them worthy of this tribute. These truths are two-fold, and the first goes like this: There is a fundamental friendship in the violence of chess. The people on this list have preyed upon me with neither mercy nor hard feelings. That’s how it is when I win, too; that’s how it always is.
The second is that chess shrinks the world. One might see it as esoteric, as the domain strictly of suited academics or mild-mannered kids with taped-up eyeglasses; this is a fallacy. Chess is the most universal game there is. Conjure any image of any human in your mind’s eye; I’ve been beaten by someone who looks like that. Think of any region of the globe; there are chess masters from there. And if there’s anyone on this list to whom I didn’t say this then, let me say it now: Good game.
Nick O'Brien is a fiction and essay writer originally from Montclair, New Jersey. His work has appeared in The Racket and Humana Obscura, and he has performed at a wide array of literary reading events. Nick currently lives with his partner in Albuquerque, New Mexico.