|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
Chessville
Advertise to Single insert:
|
Another Story Perry The PawnPusher By Rick Kennedy It had been a miscalculation, after all. Staring into the pieces, I could sense their shame, as if, in their wooden hearts, they knew they had betrayed me. A cruel game, chess. After each battle, come what may, the knights and the bishops and the rooks and the pawns go back to their starting places, no wiser, as if nothing at all had happened. The players are another story. "Hello? You still here?" I wrenched my gaze away from the silent battlefield, and caught the rheumy eyes of a frazzled old man, peering absent-mindedly over my casualties. "Club closed a half hour ago, you know," he informed me, nibbling on a nail. "Care for a game?" It was Perry. We'd met. "No," I managed, my voice breaking from lack of use. "I've had enough for tonight, thank you." If he heard me, or my dismissal, he didn't let on. His hands shuffled about in the space between us, and I watched a parody of my game running backward, as first the white pieces, then the black pieces, sought out and then returned to their home squares. "You played a Grandmaster tonight. Show me." Indeed, I had. Grandmaster Tsentov, late of the late Soviet Union. Once a hero of the People and the State, wined and dined and feted by the best. Now, in this new age of freedoms, forced to support himself by vagabonding about our land of opportunity, selling his skills in simultaneous exhibitions. Tsentov: a big and brutal man, known for his big and brutal style of play. "Cave man chess," he called it. Looking at him, you could almost imagine him stalking the Club, his fists full of pawns, his knuckles dragging along on the ground. Or the chess board. "It started out as a French, didn't it?" Perry persisted, sliding the first few pawns into place. His voice assumed a quiet, respectful tone. I appreciated that. A few months ago, in a game played overseas, Tsentov had bludgeoned an opponent in the Advance Variation of the French Defense, showcasing his usual 600 pound gorilla demeanor. The game had gotten world wide attention. I wonder how many players had gotten past the senseless adulation and hero worship, and found the crucial flaw in the attack. The one that I had found after weeks of pouring over the position. The one that I knew had to be there. "I followed your game for a while, you know. Until it got complicated. Then I went and checked out some of the easier ones." I detest vulgar chess, and those who play it. If there is anything worth hanging onto in this unstable world, it must be the crystal clear beauty of a finely played game. A well thought out game: logical from beginning to end. Tsentov, with his crudities, was destined to be my mortal enemy, from the day he first pushed his first pawn. From the day he sacrificed his first piece. On the day he set foot in our Club. Even if he was the grandmaster, putting on the exhibition, and I the candidate master, among many challengers. I would stand up to him. "There." Perry adjusted a knight. "I think." He had been playing out the moves for each side, from memory. That surprised me. Now he had reached the critical position in the game, and was staring at it with a dubious, cross-eyed gaze. "After this, I moved on to the other tables. What happened?" Indeed. In Monte Carlo, Tsentov had snatched a pawn in this position. After Black's recapture, the Russian had offered first one knight, then the other, in a surprising double sacrifice. The crowds had gone wild. Here, without thinking, he had made the grab again. Victory danced madly in his eyes, and he braced himself for the cheers and the ruckus to follow. "He took my pawn, Perry, this way." I made the move on the board. I tried to mimic Tsentov's grand and ostentations mannerisms - piece in, pawn out, thank you, thank you. But, I had been on to Tsentov. There hadn't been any need to regain the lost pawn: this was his oversight. His, and the world's, but not mine. Staring the miscreant full in the eyes, searching in vain for what was left of his misbegotten soul, I had advanced my Queen into the middle of his pieces, offering her capture three different ways. Delaying the celebration. The next two minutes had been ecstacy for me. "Oh, man! No wonder you lost!" moaned Perry. "You hung your queen. Basic oversight. Beginner's mistake. Time to go home and bake cookies. Sheesh!" He scratched his head, and then his beard, and then, in succession, his shoulders, his arms and his thighs. I waited. I waited for Perry to catch up, the way I had waited for Tsentov. The grandmaster had finally seen it. "Capturing the queen with the pawn leads to checkmate in four moves," I intoned. "Bishop takes queen, leads to a mate in five. "Best of all," and here I remembered Tsentov's original combination, "knight takes queen, leads to a mate in six." "That so? How about that?" Perry stuck his face down over the board, inspecting it closely for a full three seconds before pulling back. Obviously, he'd seen enough. "Heck, then I'd just ignore the fool Lady, hang onto my extra pawn, and try to beat you in the endgame." Which is precisely what Tsentov had done. I wiped the pieces from the board with a fierce backhand, and Perry, startled, began waving his arms in front of him to ward me off. He stopped when he saw me laugh. Months of work, and all of it a miscalculation. It had taken Tsentov minutes to see through it. But it had taken the Club pawnpusher only seconds. Perhaps it really was time to go home and bake some cookies. |
The
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
