Black or White, Doesn't Matter

Gary shut the door from the garage with his foot while pulling off his jacket. The door jamb rattled with a resonating boom. He threw his coat into a cubby, dropped his keys on the counter and hurried into the family room.

“Hey, Babe, I won!” he exclaimed.

Ellen, five months pregnant, sat curled on the sofa with a comforter over her legs and belly. A fire crackled in the hearth behind a wrought iron screen. She removed her headphones and placed her laptop on the coffee table next to a cup of tea.

“I’m sorry?” she said.

“I won the chess tournament today! Can you believe it?  I actually won!”

Smiling, she said, “That’s incredible, Honey! You won on your first try? That’s crazy! But, I mean, you have been working really hard on your chess.”

Gary, five foot ten with curly brown hair, paced back and forth on the hard wood floors, waving his hands as he spoke.

“Well, not exactly the whole tournament. They put everybody into a quad. So, every four players are in a round robin based on their rating, each puts up $20, the tournament people keep $20, and the winner of the quad gets the other $60. But, yeah, I won my quad!”

Ellen, still smiling, said, “Amazing! Hey, listen, stop moving around like that, you’re making me dizzy. Can you just sit here next to me?”

Gary paused to look at her and then kept pacing. “I can’t. Seriously, I’m too stoked.”

“Fine,” she said.

“Okay, let me just walk you through the whole thing. So, I went to Wawa on my way there to pick up a ham and cheese sub and a protein drink. The games can take up to an hour, so I knew I’d be there through lunchtime. You know how I get when I’m hungry.”

Ellen closed her eyes and nodded.

“When I got to the YMCA there were a ton of people. It’s a busy gym, especially on Sunday’s, so it took a while to get through security. But I made it to the tournament hall on the second floor with plenty of time.”

“The room had about forty tables with two chessboards on each. People were kind of milling around the player sheets which were taped to the wall. I found my name and saw I was starting with the white pieces, which I took as a good sign. As you know, the player with the white pieces has a bit of an advantage. Okay, so my opponent was an Asian dude who was already seated at the board. When I sat down, he looked at me a little weird and said, “How old are you?” I told him I’m 38. Then he asked, “How long have you been playing chess?” and I said, “Since Covid started, about a year.” He didn’t respond so we started the game.”

“Now, let me just say that it’s a little strange playing over the board chess when you’ve only played online. You have to move the pieces with your hand and manually hit the clock, instead of using a mouse. But I got used to it pretty quickly. Anyway, I decided to play aggressively, so I opened with the Scotch Gambit.”

Ellen raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, a gambit is when you give away a pawn for a positional advantage. It’s risky if your opponent knows what they’re doing. But if they don’t it can be lethal, and my opponent did not know what he was doing. By the tenth move I was up a pawn, and by the fifteenth move he was cooked. I have to give him credit for playing on, but I checkmated him a few moves later.”

Ellen clapped softly. A log popped in the fireplace. Gary quickly added wood to the dwindling fire before continuing. He poked the logs to set them properly, releasing an upward shower of orange embers and closed the door on the fire screen.

“I finished quicker than most players, and it was getting close to noon, so I decided to eat my lunch. They have a decent sized waiting room just outside of the playing hall, but the place was packed. It was like every player brought someone with them. I just went to my car and listened to classical music. It was kind of nice to get away for a few minutes.”

“You must’ve been so excited after winning your game,” said Ellen. She was holding her mug in both hands, looking at him over the rim.

“Yeah! I was nervous going in, not having played against real people, except online, but once it began the game just flowed. Alright, so I finished up my lunch and went back to the tournament. My second opponent was Indian. She was very quiet, just kind of shook my hand and kept her eyes on the board. I had the black pieces, and she had the white pieces this time. She played D4, which means a queen’s pawn opening; actually, I think it was the Queen’s Gambit Declined.”

“Queen’s Gambit, like the show?” asked Ellen.

Gary paused, “Um, yes, like the show, but without all the drugs and fashion.”

“Very funny,” she said.

“Right, so I know a tricky defense to play against the Queen’s Gambit. It’s called the Cambridge Springs variation. It worked perfectly. I mean she obviously hadn’t studied it because I won her bishop by move eight. So now she’s down a piece and it’s basically over, but she battled on. A couple times she tried some tactics, but I had an answer for everything. Ultimately, I beat her in the end game.”

“Wow,” said Ellen, “so at this point you’re two for two. You must’ve been flying high.”

“I was so pumped I couldn’t wait for the third game. Fortunately, there was only about a fifteen-minute break. I took a leak then drank my protein shake. Before sitting down, I checked the standings. My opponent for the third game, a blond-haired white dude, had also won two games. So, the winner of our game would win the quad and the sixty bucks.”

“I could tell he was nervous, you know, he couldn’t look me in the eye and he gave me this dead fish handshake. We had to draw lots to see who would have the white pieces and who would have the black. Honestly, I was like black or white, doesn’t matter, I knew I was going to win. I mean, I felt invincible.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so confident. I like it sweetie,” said Ellen.

Gary smiled, “Ha ha! Anyway, there was a really weird moment before the game. My opponent put on this conical hat covered in rainbow colors and it had one of those elastic straps under the chin. It reminded me of the story of the guy with the wooden leg, the chess hustler, who would take a penknife and jam it into his prosthesis when he was in a losing position, to psyche out his opponent.”

“I thought that guy was a pool hustler, not a chess hustler,” said Ellen.

“Whatever, the point is that he was playing mind games, trying to get inside my head. But I didn’t let him. I just kept my eyes on the board and played chess. He was a little tentative out of the opening, so I decided to go for the jugular. I set up a trap which he fell right into. And then it happened.”

Ellen stopped rubbing her baby bump and looked at Gary expectantly. “Okay,” she said, “so what happened?”

“Well, Bobby Fischer said there’s a moment in every game when the losing player realizes they’re done. In fact, what Bobby Fischer said was that his goal was to crush his opponent’s mind. And when it happens you can see it, you know, their shoulders slump and they just sort of wilt. I saw it and it was beautiful! Once I sprung the trap, I was able to sacrifice my queen for his knight, he had to take back with his bishop, and then I took his bishop with my pawn. Checkmate! I actually checkmated his king with my pawn. I know you don’t play, but trust me, it’s super rare to checkmate with a pawn.”

Ellen clapped her hands and said, “That’s incredible, Babe! Okay, so you’ve just won the tournament. What’d you next?”

“Well, I shook my opponent’s hand and showed the tournament director the results. It took him a few minutes to get me the money. Then I went to the restroom and got ready to go.”

Gary stopped pacing and turned to Ellen. “But, okay, check this out. As I was leaving, I saw my opponent from the third game. He was literally sitting in his mom’s lap crying. And as I went past, I saw his dad leaning against the wall. He was pissed. “Asshole,” he whispered to me kind of out of the side of his mouth.

“I was shocked, but thankfully it didn’t register until I was further down the hall. I just thought, whatever, and kept walking. And that’s it, I drove home.”

Ellen looked at him, frowning. “Wait a second, how old were your opponents?”

“How old were they?”

“Yeah, how old, like what were their ages?”

Gary pursed his lips and looked up, then said, “Well, I got a better look at the conical hat my third opponent wore during the game. He must’ve taken it off after losing. Anyway, it said “Happy 7^th Birthday!”, so I guess he was 7. The other two were probably a year younger.”

Ellen stared at him with a half-smile frozen on her face, and then said, “Let me get this straight, you just beat up a bunch of first graders, including one who was celebrating his birthday?”

“Dang, Babe, when you say it like that it kind of cheapens it. You have to understand, these kids are killers. They’d put their boot on my throat if I gave them a chance. Trust me, I wouldn’t be doing them any favors by taking it easy. Besides, I had to think about the points.”

“What points?” she asked.

“It was a US Chess Federation sponsored tournament. If I lose a game, I lose rating points. Plus, the money, you know, sixty bucks is sixty bucks. Yeah, no way I could afford to let them win,” said Gary, shaking his head.

Ellen looked down, reached for her laptop and said, “I’m going to watch reruns of Outlander.”

Gary gave her a one finger wave, and then quickly went to his office. He needed to input his games into the computer and begin preparing for next week.