Blood Sport

Gross and uncultured, half a barbarian, he seemed at first a worse lieutenant than either Furius or Cossinus. So Lavinia remembered standing dishevelled and dusty, but still with beauty upon her, in the presence of the slave who had shaken Rome.

Spartacus

In one of my earliest games of chess I had the misfortune one evening to be matched against the former expert international, and triple winner of the Essex county title, Mike Wills. I managed to take him to a king and pawn ending and was therefore peeved to eventually lose. Reluctantly resigning I told him, “You are no Master, you just wait for a blunder.” “So that’s what makes a Master, well you just wait and you’ll be a master too,” replied Mike kindly. I’m still waiting! But patience is a mighty weapon that can be used and wielded by a chess player. With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance all things are possible …

It was Christmas 1971. I was just finishing a twelve month sentence in Pentonville prison, when Harry Collins, a burglar known as the Brighton Fox, asked me one day if I knew how to play chess. When I said no, he said, “Why don’t you learn? On a chessboard you can do all that you do now without getting nicked for it. What else is it but breaking and entering when you force your way into your opponent’s castled position, hijack his pieces, steal his pawns, abduct his queen and kill his king in broad daylight?” With nothing better to do, I gave it a try, little knowing it was to alter my life. Whether in here or outside, everyone is striving for happiness, total absorption in someone or something; and chess supplied this total state free of charge. For hours I became completely intoxicated on this new brandy, its meditation of moves, losing consciousness of my surroundings, totally immersed, undistracted by cold or hunger, heat or thirst. What magic!

“It’s a pity more people in here don’t know the bliss inherent in chess,” I said to Harry. “Are there any books on it?”

“Books!” he laughed. “There’s no end to the books on chess (though a lot is discovered by accident and more still by mistake). Every phase is covered. The double phalanx, the inverted phalanx, the long distance opposition, the healthy majority, the crippled minority and …” and here he smiled wickedly, “You know what?”

“What?”

“There is no substitute for victory, so never become a cheap pawn grabber. Always attack.”

“What about strategy?” I asked, trying to be smart. This made him frown and push the pieces about.

“What about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s right, you don’t. You ain’t even got a clue … you may never have … you could be too old to pick it up now – I don’t rightly know. But you got somefink … you can see miles ahead … as for strategy, try to gain the edge and put yourself on the winning side. Failing that, try to extricate yourself from the losing side. And if you can’t manage that, ask for a draw. Now let’s get on,” he said, taking a pull on his fag. “Try not to get your king in zugs.”

“In what?”

“Zugzwang. And if you forget to take your opponent’s pawn ‘en passant’ and it’s looking bad for you, you say ‘adoubes’ and chop it off before you make another move.”

What more was there to say? Everything had to be learnt over and over again in this new chess language. I was all fired up, I wanted to master chess in a month – two at the most. I had tasted and now craved to devour.

Then Harry told me a sobering little tale. Churchill wanted to fill the coffers to aid the Second World War. He hit on the idea of awarding titles to people in return for money. He began to create dukes and knights, barons, lords and so on. An ex-prisoner, a burglar who had just stolen a vast sum of money, went up to Churchill and said, “I want a title.” The Prime Minister said, “Yes, I can give you a title, the price is such and such.” “Give me the title of chess master,” cried the ex con. Churchill recoiled shocked. “This I cannot do”, he said. “Ask me for something else. I can make you a king, I can make you a queen, I can even make you the governor of Pentonville Prison, but only you alone can make yourself a chess master.”

“Make no mistake about this,” said The Fox, “if you want to be good at chess it will claim a large part of your spare time. Certainly in the beginning you will have to devote many hours to its study, something like the energy needed for lift-off on a space rocket which, however, once airborne, cruises more or less of its own volition.”

To allow us to clean them, the screws used to leave the cell doors open on Saturday mornings. Harry appeared at my open door and tipped me the wink. “Let’s take a walk, see the prison players.”

We came to the end of the landing. “In here,” said H, pushing back a cell door. Inside, half a dozen cons sat, their shirt sleeves rolled up, exposing arms covered in words and images. Promises of undying love tattooed on perishable flesh. Slump-shouldered, they stared down, lost in thought, over makeshift chessboards. Time had become their toy. When finally they made a move, their technique looked so assured, I thought. They must have learnt it at an early age or else they were all lifers, until my tutor put me wise.

“In the beginning it’s just a question of who’s got the best book – one library against another, so to speak,” whispered Harry out of the side of his mouth. We watched in silence. I was dying for a game, but after each game ended the cons would hold noisy, lengthy post mortems, bawl-outs, each player proclaiming to have found the truth of the position in the form of a win for themselves. Only total and annihilating victory will satisfy. I was thirty years old and had become completely besotted with chess. It had driven out and replaced all former desires in my mind.

Formidable and grand on a hilltop in Camden, the glass-fronted Prompt Corner chess café dominated the approach to Hampstead. It was springtime in England, one year before Bobby Fischer’s conquest of the chess world. I walked into the café full of confidence, eager to test my new chess skill. All around the sides people sat at tables smoking, watching and playing chess. There was some noise – bursts of approval and dwindling growls of disappointment – but not enough for so large a group. Laughter was aware of itself, and so was conversation. A short middle-aged guy in a much faded suit sat with patrician remoteness watching a game near the door. There was a strange feeling of isolation and expectancy. I ordered a coffee and caught his eye. Fancy a game? I mouthed silently. He nodded a yes.

We set up the pieces at an empty table. “We’ll play for the board fee,” he said. We tossed for colours. I drew Black. My opening blunders soon became his middle game brilliancies; my difficulties had gathered a delighted crowd. Inwardly trembling with competitive anxiety, I glanced at the steady gaze on my opponent’s face while he calmly analysed positions invisible to my patzer’s eyes. Behind me the café kibitzers (all lowered eyelids and knowing smiles) mumbled conspiratorially – the faithful speak a cryptic tongue. Their nervous responses were keyed to the different tensions. The whole atmosphere was charged with stress. You could almost feel the silent throb of intense minds as my opponent lifted his fianchettoed bishop. My heart rose: that bishop was guarding the path to his king – I see my knights pulling off a quick mating coup. My mind in a mix-up I go through the attack with rash courage once more. In a crude pillaging butcher-boy fashion I mentally recite if I go here, does he go there? If I do this will he do that? Then he placed the bishop on a certain square slowly, easily, marvelling at his advantage and the swift cruel sac cut through all that inner chat.

The spectators applauded, there was a right and a wrong way to do things and this player knew how to handle a bad bishop. They sat back and smiled satisfaction on his behalf.

Every afternoon I went to that café, watching and waiting for a chance to play those warriors whose concentration was unnerving in its power to exclude all else, in fact their involvement was so entire, so absolute, external stimulus however rarefied would have been redundant. In this absorbed state, with chins pressed firmly into concave chests, they put their smouldering cigarettes down on the tabletops where the fags burn into the wood and, as Mr Kounnou the proprietor used to observe, also tarnish the polished tops. But nothing could be said to them because they were geniuses and genius has to be allowed a little elbow room since the least thing can put them off their stroke.

Capricious players, they were usually professional people: doctors, lawyers. accountants – middle-class spivs – fluctuating between silent and moody to rough and uproarious. The odd thing was, these geniuses weren’t necessarily the strongest players in the café. In fact they were hackers (hewers of wood), always seeking the unsound edge. The really strong ones, those with a bit more art to their butchery, were tactical gladiators, coffeehouse heroes with sudden death opening traps and surrealistic-edged tactics, more lethal than a Glasgow kiss; as opposed to the club players – book openings and classical strategy. The counter in the Prompt Corner café was situated between two alcoves at the back. Those whose repertoires had reached the limits of eccentricity went into these dark corners and whispered, swore that their openings were right.

But gossip is nearly always in disagreement over which openings are best. Some players plump for tight, solid defensive structures against blatant attack such as the Caro-Kann or the old Rubinstein, while others, more daring, are of the opinion that counter gambits such as the Sicilian or Centre Counter, the Benko or even the Dutch are the only nostrum.

To pay for such expensive and specialized opening books with which to outfox their opponents some give up eating and practise other small economies such as walking to distant venues instead of taking the train. Yet it is only after they have studied and learned many different openings that they discover that analysis, the ability to see clearly, is one of the most difficult commodities to purchase.

Eager to fight but dim of plan I battered away, making the most astounding sacs only to find in the end that they were useless; my opponents possessed a sense of adroitness and timing that I lacked. It all depends on timing, for strategy accumulates whereas sacrifice comes with surprise. Always with surprise. Then someone gave me a book on strategy, My System by Aron Nimzowitsch. (Silman’s positional masterpiece had yet to come.) After studying it, my moves began to gain a bit more bite. Although I never enjoyed learning openings, with the help of Nimzo’s book I managed to reach middle games where I could search for a sac. There’s a magical quality associated with finding a sacrifice. Chess is a blood sport. Don’t get me wrong, strategy’s alright, you’ve got to learn to add a bit of water to the wine, you need both to keep healthy so to speak. But when the subtle stuff doesn’t work take the old Fox’s advice: switch to brutality. It’s a simple thing to say that one player is a piece down, but how can you explain the agony of playing on a piece down? It can be vicious, brutal and deadly, but something compels us to watch two opponents smashing hell out of each other. Perhaps it’s because, as the adrenaline starts to pump, the mind loses its agitation, becoming one-pointed on the game and, for the span of the struggle, our mundane worries seem to disappear. Chess has that kind of power. Once you begin to play in earnest everything disappears except for your opponent and his or her moves.

Some maintain that chess is logical, ordered, genteel, and for them this may be so. But for me everything to do with chess was in the nature of contradiction. I thought when I found it (anxious as I was for something to attach to) that I was grasping the secret of life – something with which to express myself.

Our weapons are: the sudden sac; a knight forking king and queen; a bishop skewer to the rook’s ribs. Your eye lingers on the vital piece. You try out the variations and visualise your moves down to the last detail. Even so there may still be a hidden flaw. You try to resist it but you’re hot and panting. You remember the climax, it begins to overwhelm. No murderer or rapist is as honest in his lust as a chess player moving in for a sacrificial kill. Indeed it is more than just the momentary effect of sex. Perhaps that is why Caissa, the chess Muse, does not allow us to be perpetually brilliant. She knows that only our vanity would flourish.

But in the coffeehouse you have to learn quickly how to hold and hit on the break, land low blows and rabbit punches, bite and gouge in the clinches, blow smoke with pinpoint accuracy into an opponent’s left or right eye – useful preparation perhaps before moving on to mix it in tournaments with players who ply their trade at the highest level.

Along with everyone else coffeehouse chess also seems to attract a special sort of player who feeds on the humiliation and disintegration of others; pressure alters everything. Like day release degenerates these types loll around the tables using well-rehearsed routines while absorbed in silent contempt for anyone who doesn’t know what these routines are.

Usually not too keen on any strategic foreplay, their morbid intensity derives from exclusive preoccupation with attack. As far as they are concerned Steinitz sucks. They are only interested in quickies; and yet somehow they have become skilful in unsoundness. So it’s not advisable to go on the nod (even if you have got your knight up on king six) against them. Begrudgers to the last, there is precious little glory in victory against them and unspeakable shame in defeat.

Nobody here is exactly what they seem to be. Most have transgressed some middle-class taboo. The kibitzers are in a class of their own; their lips are contemptuous; their eyes wear the expression of sleep and cigarette smoke. A mixture of vain opinions, false valuations, imaginations … and the like. No one can match them for insolence, simple arrogance and all-round obnoxiousness. Their impertinence is unlimited, when they catch you looking at them their eyelids come down to cover their thoughts. At three years of age they’d probably beaten up their nannies and drowned them in the bath while their mothers were in the kitchen rinsing out their nappies. There is no move made of which they approve. Through watching untold thousands upon thousands of café games they have acquired vast theoretical experience but it is tinged with an incestuousness which, were it not for the frequent visits of experts and the occasional visit of some master player, would certainly turn completely in upon itself. Sometimes considerable amounts of money are wagered on the outcome of a game. When this happens a miasma of suspicion and paranoia descends over the place. People sit at the tables, silent and separate, carefully diluting any touch of warmth or friendliness, appraising you in terms of immediate practical or prestigious advantage. Even the waitress, with her short skirt, cocked-hip sensuality, suddenly becomes discourteous unless you order something quickly and the proprietor’s crouched stance over by the till defies any attempts at bodily truth finding.

Once in a while some minor celebrity comes to the café, perhaps a novelist or a painter or even a poet, prudent and cautious, but fully believing they are possessed of a rare chess skill. These visitors stir up the imaginations of the hustlers, excite their professional curiosity amid the general silence and tense immobility now prevalent throughout the room. The stranger, trying to ignore a situation in accordance with the etiquette of the house, adopts an unconcerned and independent air, all of which the café approved while the sharks, with covert readiness … with practised professional motions (mixing old wiles with new tricks) flip the pieces and pawns nonchalantly around the board, making an exchange here, a sacrifice there. These players, whose hands flow out with increased displays of wizardry, who are ready to play from morning to night, hardly stopping for a visit to the loo, now try to convey the impression that they are only here for fun: but if pushed they might perhaps play to oblige.

There are many methods but in the end they all come down to the same thing – the ability to look and talk like a loser. Someone may pretend to be drunk, or at least well on the way. Would the stranger care to play for a small stake? By now languishing from inaction and expectation, the stranger, still sufficiently suspicious, agrees to play for a small amount, takes a chair, tosses for colours and makes his move, commenting indifferently in the jargon of the game. Another cycle has begun, the performance is already in full swing.

Suddenly the house player finds he is in trouble. He hesitated, as if deliberating some refinement of attack but a knight on the edge of the board should have been brought back into play. Very briefly his fingertips touched it, rejected it, selected his queen and held it up for this final pretence before plopping it down in front of his opponent’s rook. Lo and behold he’s blundered – it’s a losing move. He considers this, though insincere disbelief mingling with tolerant amusement shows upon his face.

He is not shocked, just in a friendly daze. No one gets nasty, no one feels slighted or aggrieved, no one has stowed away a hurt. The other players congratulate the winner, and since he seems a tad too modest in his triumph, the loser also offers some crude adoration of his own. The whole café nods. Sagely, they understand the winner’s tactics. But their collective honour is at stake. The stranger, quite unaware of the scorn in which they held him, now begins to revel in the depraved humbug.

Great effort is sometimes required to entice the mark to play for higher stakes but usually the punter’s own pride is enough to do the trick. Without taking the cigarette from his mouth and screwing up his eyes from the smoke, the winner pulls his meagre winnings towards him. Now settling back, thoroughly enjoying his momentary power, vanity begins to persuade him; he looks quite ridiculous in his eagerness as he promptly ups the stakes himself. Formerly contemplative, solemn, and oddly sad. His opponent now begins to smile. It is faint, it barely moves his lips, but it forms, tiny, sly, unanxious. The whole house knows and picks up his contempt. There is an air of nonchalance upon the features of the two opponents now, but on whose face it sat with the greatest ease is not that hard to see.

To become a good chess player requires a hard apprenticeship. It certainly doesn’t come easy and perhaps we shall never learn the technique with any conviction like the expert. For only he can remember the moves in their correct order of forcing reality to assume an illusion.

Thrilled by our own daring we contemplate a sacrifice of such brilliance but his reply, which you had so far failed to grasp, parried it with an ease that was almost disdainful. Effortlessly it diminished the power of your attack and now you are paying the penalty for having given too much too soon. For only the elite, who hide their esoteric knowledge under the guise of nonchalance, can carry off such wonders.

Mornings come hard to some players in the café but, whatever happens, every new day ushers in such a sense of expectation and excitement that any other life than the coffeehouse would seem flat and dull. I can hardly hold back the tears, because, thinking back now, it was on just such a day, a day like any other, that I decided to leave the chatty and witty life of the coffeehouse to play instead at the great hall.

And now we enter the real chess arena, where, haughty about ratings, everybody has only one thought in mind: to win – to pile up plaudits against the county grader’s autumnal assessment. And to this end we all hope for a weaker opponent, but in the tournaments there are no outright weakies. It may be, however, that there will be some less attentive, and some less brave on the board than off, such as the vets, those of advanced years and declining health whose talent was once immense but whose recall has become fallible. Those prone to stress will try to keep it at bay, but soon all will suffer from their own brand of tension and the fear. Unlike mathematics, chess cannot stimulate without disturbing. Even in achievement you are writhing in uncertainty.

All tournament games are played with a chess clock: that is, two clocks joined together (in the café, play with clocks is usual but not mandatory). When one player makes his move, he presses a button which stops his own clock and starts his opponent’s. A red flag drops on the clock of the player who runs out of time, for whoever fails to keep the time limit, regardless of the position on the board, loses the game. The clock was not designed to keep the players comfortable.

Weekend congresses with a fast time limit and long sessions of play, sometimes up to nine hours a day, are very strenuous and result in fatigue and time troubles. The play is quite sharp. Active attacking chess is the order of the day and it’s difficult to hold up a sustained precise defence against it, even if you do retreat behind a barrier of elaborate calm, for aggressive play asks severe questions of your bravery. A score of the game must be made as you play. The moves are written down on an official score sheet which must be handed to the tournament marshals at the end of each round.

Into this gruelling, competitive world, where sport, art, and science merge to alter the meaning of time, we throw ourselves each weekend. Seething with aggressions, hunched over our boards in deadly fascination like hawks mantling their prey. As in all sports, the opponents come in different shapes and sizes, temperaments and habits.

Men, women and infants, many apparently not long out of the cradle yet already wedded to their brutal calling. But who are these children? Well according to their parents they are prodigies (that always spells trouble) – gifted ones and while some of them (wearing extra thick glasses) do indeed appear to be thoughtful, gentle little souls, others behave like bad-mannered peacocks. In fact something mocking lurks around their eyes and nostrils but their guardians with unyielding egoism in their eyes see only greatness and for a while their names become inscribed in the shifting roster of chess celebrities.

It is not yet nine o’clock and the hall is not quite full. Many seats lie empty as the tournament marshals make their hasty last minute adjustments to the pairing lists. Small crowds gather around the lists. After checking who they’re to be matched up against they rush off to the canteen, hoping to snatch a quick cup of coffee or tea, but return disappointed on finding the brew has not yet boiled.

One minute before nine everyone takes their place at the board. Whether chastened or elated by our opponent’s grade, now is the time when we compose ourselves for the coming struggle, as the tournament controller, surrounded by his marshals, reads to us the rules of this engagement. Now each one checks his own and his opponent’s clock, making sure it’s set correctly and in good working order. Some of us will use this as a mutual ice-breaker, shaking hands and exchanging names; others will be weighing up their opponents surreptitiously, sly-eyed, with many an under-browed glance; and some will just sit staring into some sort of distance of their own, perhaps suffering from a sudden bout of opening insecurity which is beyond the reach of any tranquilizer.

Everybody looks and is dressed differently and if asked would probably give a different reason for becoming a tournament soldier. Some might reply that it was the love of the game, others the thrill of the chase, a psychic hunt. Some may believe it to be more hobby than habit, but the truth of the matter is we’re all trying to prove something, and our striving has become an addiction, warping our sleep, claiming our lives.

Talent and youth, bright middle-class children with psychopathic tendencies – that’s what’s needed for success at tournament chess; with the emphasis on youth. And so their mums send them forth with the Spartan mother’s warning: come back victorious or don’t come back at all. Well, it is a discipline, codes-rules-values, and part of the code is to shake hands, win or lose, with friend and foe alike. The ritual is repeated before and after each game regardless of results. Over come the hands: small, large, medium, enormous, dainty, delicate, strong, weak, hard, soft, limp, damp, and dry. After this sporting gesture one is free to cheat, lie, jostle, harangue, pace up and down, fart loudly, laugh, cry, sneeze, bang the pieces down, intimidate, glare and stare until the game ends once more with a gentlemanly handshake.

The controller has finished his speech and now gives the order for play to begin. Except for the monotonous tick of the clocks and the muted murmur of the marshals, the hall on the surface is subdued and silent, deceptively benign, hundreds of heads bent over boards. There seems something curiously pious about the whole scene. Indeed, for the game absorbs them totally. All that can be heard is a click clack sound: pieces being moved? Or the echo of an axe thudding, chopping out its mortal strokes. The boundaries are not marked but along each one of them stretches a no-man’s land of chaos and destruction.

It is now four hours since play began and the first time control has been reached. Those who have played good moves sit visibly relaxed, while those who’ve played badly and are tired of being brave are beginning to give in to despair. To those of us whose flags have just fallen, moves good or bad no longer matter. We can move at liberty now, between the tables. Two competitors on the right are engaged in a vicious battle for control of the central squares. They move the pieces with light, quick movements that make every move they make look like sleight of hand as they become embroiled in a bloodbath which only one will survive. The player of the white army suddenly castles his king into safety, it is a blunder but he is still playing so aggressively his fallibility has not yet been exposed. So the game continues until his opponent with curbed excitement eventually spots the flaw and, capturing the white queen, calmly holds up the other’s misery in his hand.

Meanwhile the tournament marshal, a tall, heavy-set old man who has the grave, slow movements of authority, continues to tread his wooden round. He frowns frequently at the hall’s more unfortunate qualities. He doesn’t seem to like chess too much, probably at his best in a church reading Scripture from the pulpit. Fond of quoting the wisdom of others or repeating pieces from the Bible, “Do not bring knives to my house or spears to my altar”; sometimes he exclaims “Another win” as he is handed a score sheet, but more often than not he quotes Scripture. He seems to have a proverb for everything. Still, he is the main man here, judge, jury and executioner. His word is law. Humble are the mighty.

It is hot now and the air in the hall is full of cigarette smoke. Chess blindness and fatigue make it difficult to distinguish amongst the hideous tangles – subtleties of strategy, and many players falling foul of hidden weaknesses go down swiftly to tactical blows. One player has elected to fight the endgame at long range. Chopping off the other’s good king’s bishop with his badly placed knight denies to him the lance (bishop). He must try to keep the position closed. Hinder the queen’s bishop, block it by wedging his pawns so he can get in close to deliver short chopping blows with the axe (his hopefully better knight). There was the pronounced snap of chess pieces but the cleverest details of their moves were not displayed upon the board. The player of the black pieces shifted his position, nervousness or a wish to interpret the subtleties? His opponent had lost interest; the outcome seemed already known to him as he sat brooding over the move he hadn’t the strength to make.

Tension, both mental and physical, is rife now; there is much movement in the big hall as players walk back and forth, round about and up and down to alleviate their stress. Trying to reach the last time control, your clock becomes a ticking terror.

“Take no prisoners” is ironed into every face, as they sink down further into the core of their focus – like Chinese Zen masters of the left-hand path steeped in unholy tranquillity, trying to give their opponent’s king the squeeze-out that’s the ying and yang of it.

Suddenly a woman laughs. It seems strange in this tense atmosphere. Some glance to see a fine-boned fading beauty, former British women’s champion, sweet if somewhat arrogant, this woman of the masters.

In the midst of this mass of adult flesh a child sits facing a grown-up. Since he is a very little boy someone, perhaps his parents or one of the marshals or even his opponent in a moment of awkward gallantry, has seen fit to place a couple of thick books on his chair to enable him to see comfortably over the table top where his calm, infantile countenance is at variance with his opponent’s harried features. The child’s legs swing back and forth beneath the table. The elderly man glances quickly at his clock. The chief element now in their game is speed, yet the man is unable to make up his mind.

In the state of shock in which his young opponent’s move had left him, he continues to stare at the clock. Its ticks seemed to be playing directly on his nervous system. In fact the burden of making a move seems to have become so awesome to him that the man’s whole body begins to shake, writhing in terrible, tortuous contortions as he starts to study the deeper implications of the position. Some unspecified manoeuvre was abroad, still faceless but he sensed its threat. It’s not a game any more, it’s a nightmare. Eventually he picked up a bishop. Suspended from his quivering fingers, the piece took on a semblance of life. A concerned spectator shook his head sadly but the old man continued to play because it seemed he couldn’t think of an alternative. The little prodigy sits, infinitely still now; patiently watching and waiting. His large, lustrous eyes shining with the gleam of a true assassin.

On another table a pimply-faced youth with narrow-eyed concentration waited nervously while his opponent, an older girl with glasses and braces on her teeth, scrutinized the board sitting with her fingers primly poised above a minor piece.

He trembled with febrile excitement, his flag was about to fall, he did not want her to make that move; obviously no student of Caesar, he gazed with adolescent suffering, his whole being was centred on the clock. He rocked back and forward in his seat with a profound air of defeated gloom, he had only seconds left in which to make his reply.

As the girl leaned forward to make her move he looked up just in time to see the swell of her breast beneath her open top. And the image now occupied his mind to a far greater degree than the move she had just played upon the board.

The canteen is filling up. There is a long orderly queue of people coming to revive themselves. Even the kibitzers are standing in line, moving the route slowly like everyone else. All is nice and peaceful. There is not a queue-jumper in sight. Occupying one of the foremost tables in the café is the old maestro Ludek Pachman (the front tables are always the most coveted) playing in one of his first tournaments since his recent release from a Czech prison, where he had been held for opposing the Russian invasion. Behind him the Brazilian genius Arturo with his young attractive mother. Nearer to the counter the former British champion and chess correspondent, Leonard Barden, oblivious to time, the weather and the rest of the world, sits scribbling in his notebook.

Perhaps he is writing something about the veteran Ormstead sitting on his left, a great positional player who though sometimes struggles against determined attack. His crumpled features always betray bewilderment. Common sense urges him to avoid tactics (which prudent positional players should certainly avoid) but rage sometimes lures him into tactical battles, and so he engages his opponents unprofessionally, armed only with passion. When he realizes he cannot win a tournament outright he will throw the remaining games to artificially keep his grading down.

Behind him two juniors both dressed in black, their shoulders almost touching in conspiracy, are discussing in low voices opening novelties, gambits, and attacks. Most players love to attack: it gives them an illusion of living.

An elderly man wandered up to the counter. The waitress stood with her back to him shaping her mouth in the mirror. She turned, smiled, the smile was directed at some point to the side of his head. He began to order but the waitress became distracted by her inability to push back a stray wisp of hair. “And would it be possible my dear to have a coffee?” She reached for a cup but the man put up his hand. “Not just yet but when I’ve finished my food, and,” he bent forward to confide, “I must be quite finished because I don’t want it to get cold.”

But this kind of routine was clearly too taxing for the waitress, who wandered away.

Play has ended for the day, the competitors, drained of emotional and nervous energy, have long gone. Perhaps vowing to think no more about chess this evening, with the result that they will think of nothing else. The large hall is completely empty. All that is left to remind one of the fierce, cerebral battles that have taken place today are thousands of chessmen, lying scattered all over the tables in silent disarray. A lone cleaner quietly enters. For a second she stands, head bowed, broom in hand like a mourner at a great tragedy.

Now it is Sunday, last day of the tournament. The funeral games have begun and those who have lost their appetite for suffering give in without a murmur. But strain shows plainly on the faces of the diehards as they make that last terrible effort to stave off defeat. There is much macho posturing, for defeat is a moral stigma – Caissa’s purgatory in which a loser burns until the goddess deigns to smile on them again. Which, hopefully, most pray will be before the next tournament begins!

An interlude. Those who have finished playing adjourn to the morgue, a sideroom where we analyse and criticize but very rarely sympathize; where winners preen and losers, noisy in their humiliation, try to convey the impression that even their errors were correct. Other grades are here also. Of course, some may have won but their achievements are secondary to your calculations. It’s impossible to accept their gallant moves. One cannot help surveying their positions without pleasure, it’s quite natural that one should resent them; and now that difficult opponent has questioned your analysis too. “Do you realize,” he remarks, “that opening you played is terribly unfashionable and had I not made such a blunder I could have made a winning sacrifice on move eight.” He spoke with an air of having worked it out accurately. “Sacrifice without analysis is impotent”. “You’re totally disregarding intuition,” he replied in a still convinced voice. “So what’s your grade then?” He sees he has overstepped the mark but continues nonetheless. “I’m sorry, but you cannot seriously think your stuff is sound.” Words here at best are disrespectful, but even if there are no bon mots to break the ice between them chess players rarely cut their wrists.

Everyone has played five games, but only two have scored five points. These two are playing at the front of the stage, above them a demonstration board attended by a young board boy who will display their game as it unfolds. They are both grandmasters and, like the rest of us, have been playing since Friday. We can safely bet they are both suffering from lack of sleep as they sit quietly at their table up on the stage like figures on an altar, waiting for the last round to begin.

In the late afternoon sunshine the tournament marshal sits by a window considering the score sheets, looking for the best game. Though his clothes are crumpled and worn and his hair stands out in wild shocks of grey, there is a precision about this man. He can’t believe some of the swindles that have taken place, so he goes through them all again, his heavy face grim and brooding. Some lucky player will be rewarded with a brilliancy prize after he has sorted the treasures from the trash.

The hall is full of kibitzers, those semi-incorrigibles who take delight in the skill, or lack of it, displayed by the tournament leaders, and argue vigorously over the merit of the moves, claiming to see better, or at least as good as their superiors.

For those actually playing, things are different. Victory or defeat can hang on a thread. A momentary hesitation, a mistimed blow on the flank, a too-sudden breakthrough in the centre – all can cost the game. Small things, but defeat waits on such, and defeat is always waiting.

The thrill of fear mingles with excitement, everyone is keyed to fever pitch; they eye the game and the two masters with alertness and awe. But the masters’ concentration upon the game is so intense and absolute that the whole hall seems but an extension of themselves.

Perhaps a good shout would alleviate the pressure. But a person, even one completely inebriated, would think twice before uttering a sound here and it certainly would be most unwise. Even a whisper has been known to induce a nervous breakdown.

Yet on this, the last, the most auspicious day, someone does shout or shriek in tortured delicacy. It is the woman of the masters again. Bent almost double she might have shown more concern on gentler mornings but has become deformed over the loss of a piece.

Sometime after, the tournament marshal mounts the stage. He has an air about him that suggests he knows everything worth knowing about chess protocol. He raises a sophisticated brow because after all some pretence of approval or disapproval has to be made. But she does not apologize, because one did not apologize. Not to a fat man from the East End. but tournament marshals are not discouraged by that. Control is their destiny – they must pursue it.

Though they both need a win the grandmasters are still playing cautiously and leave no space at the margins for error, trying to grind each other slowly right down to the bone. The tournament marshal wanders over with the ponderous righteousness of a caesar. He looks at their game briefly in a way that reveals nothing then mumbles something and clears his throat. He could have been searching for words, everybody waits to hear them but he does not utter them, instead he checks his watch and begins to hum quietly to himself. The two grandmasters look up at him sharply but he is too large to scare. Not long after though their play begins to speed up and suddenly becomes more tactical, deadly cut and thrust fighting chess. The spectators smell blood as the players breathe their desperation on to each other.

The player of the white pieces is from Russia, his opponent from the UK. After that skirmish the Russian master has not apparently enhanced his position and, according to the tournament kibitzers and others who dare to pretend to sufficient skill, may even have worsened it. “One false move and it will all be over”. Sooner or later we all descend to kibitzing. The game has spun its spell.

In the awesome silence, the British master, pale and slim, stands gazing down on his pudgy-faced opponent, confidence emanating from his whole body. Wishful thinking perhaps may have inclined him towards optimism but behind the cosy hum and buzz of the home town crowd there still lies the mortal weight of trial by combat. A tiger may be plump, yet still he pounces. Unlike the other five of the UK player’s opponents, the podgy Russian champion, uninhibited by that grim tally, does not fall apart, defending dynamically throughout, he weathers the storm till his antagonist’s attack burns out. Then, with what’s left of the British master’s battle-weary army scattered all over the board, austere and disciplined he fights through to a win. The loser sighs deeply but his opponent sits unmoved.

On the chessboard, no one meets a friend.