I ARRIVE AT THE LIBRARY SOLO. Looking like an obvious first timer. Feeling slightly awkward. Luckily, I’m set up with a partner immediately.
There’s a smattering of tables. Two boards per table, set up around the meeting room. Players of varying ages, skill levels and backgrounds, some are already set up and mid-game, ahead of the group’s scheduled start time.
Larry, the club’s founder—a United States Chess Foundation National Master from 1975, local chess coach and an editor/manager of Microsoft’s ‘Play Winning Chess’ Series—is trying to get a laptop set up and linked into the room’s sound system for a virtual interview with author and chess player Kyla Zhao. She’s just released a young adult novel, a coming of age story from inside the world of competitive chess called ‘May The Best Player Win.’
Gilbert, another of the club’s administrators, is welcoming people and matching up players. He matches me up with a guy named Keith, who’d just arrived from Poulsbo. Keith is older, mustachioed, seems retired. He’s got a friendly face. Gilbert kindly introduces us and shows us to a board.
Keith asks if I play chess much. I tell him not really. Here and there throughout my life, never anything serious. He says it was kind of the same for him until he happened into a group of co-workers who would get together to play chess on break or after work when he worked for the EPA.
Lately, he had been looking for another group of people he could share the game with when he found this weekly Saturday afternoon Chess Club at the Silverdale Library which started meeting earlier this summer. He’s been coming for a couple of weeks, he said.
Another lady shows up without a partner and is matched up with another player at the table behind us. Keith leans in to double check that I actually know how to play the game.
“Oh, totally,” I respond, still looking around the room.
I’d sat down at the white pieces.
That means I’m supposed to move first.
“Oh yeah,” I said, acting like I knew that.
I made my first move—pawn B7 to B5, I think it’s called. . Don’t know if that’s how you’re supposed to say it. I had to look it up afterwards.
“Hmm… that’s interesting,” Keith says, out loud, to himself.
He makes his first move.
A couple moves later, I’m already in check. I move again, Keith moves one step away from putting me in checkmate, then pauses to show me what would have been a better move on my part to keep the game going… Apologies to the chess players, I have no idea what any of that was called. Not surprisingly, a few more moves and I was in checkmate.
Keith scans the room to see if there are any other free players.
“You know, I’ve never really studied any of the strategies in this game much, have you?” I ask, re-setting my pieces, pretending not to notice that there were no other players available.
The opening strategy is key to the entire game, Keith tells me. He shows me the most vulnerable square on the board, the one which you must always protect. He notes how you can tell when an opponent is getting ready to stage an attack. I’m distracted by a kid and their parent who pass by the door and walk towards the front desk.
“Ooooh, chess!” the kid exclaims.
Keith tells me to look up ‘The Italian Opening’ or ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ online to learn some opening strategies.
‘The Queen’s Gambit’ (the name for one of the oldest documented openings in chess), is also the title a 2020 Netflix series which helped galvanize the popularity of the historic game in the modern mainstream. I knew about that. I also knew about Bobby Fisher from that other movie back in the day. I knew that the World Chess Championships were coming up this month. And that those only happen in even numbered years. And I knew a little about the shake up in the chess world recently. One of the biggest names in chess today, the world’s top player for decades, had protested the most recent world championships after his opponent was accused of cheating against computer-programmed digital games.
I didn’t talk to Keith about any of that.
I was too busy staring at the board, pretending I knew what I was doing, trying not to lose.
We played a couple more games, alternative between white and black pieces. By the third game, I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it, but Keith was desperately looking around the room for another person to play against.
Larry calls attention to the room for the start of the live video interview with the chess writer from Singapore.
Keith and I shake hands and stand up from the table. While I’m standing back, trying to blend into the wall, another player motions to me from the other side of the room. He wants me to come join him for a game. After my first showing, I’m reluctant. But he’d just finished playing a nine-year-old, so I’ll probably be fine, right?
I sit down and set up my pieces.
Three moves later, checkmate.
I laugh. He smiles.
Keith has taken a seat next to us to play an older bohemian-looking gentleman who speaks with some sort of Eastern European accent. Keith looks over at our game which has just ended. He looks at my opponent then back at me and says, ‘Yeah, I think he’s pretty good.’
My new opponent and I swap the board and get ready for another game.
He has to keep reminding me the proper placement for the King and Queen pieces. (The King is always on the right when you are playing white.) The author on the video call is talking about what it was like being a young competitive female chess player, the fine line of letting something take over your life, and the similarities between writing a novel and playing chess.
Less than five minutes, I’m in checkmate again.
By the third game, I feel like maybe I’m starting to get the hang of it.
That last game had to have lasted almost 10 minutes. Keith and the Bohemian Gentleman had just finished their first match. Keith’s opponent was explaining the different moves Keith could’ve made to win the game, then gets up to head home for the day.
Keith sits for a while studying his game board and the new strategies he’s just learned. “Ah-ha! I could’ve had him,” he exclaims to himself.
“Checkmate,” my opponent looks at me and smiles. He turns to Keith and says, “Next game?” // BILL MAN
THE SILVERDALE CHESS CLUB meets 2:30-4:30 p.m. Saturdays at the Silverdale Kitsap Regional Library. More at silverdalechessclub.com and krl.org.
THE BREMERTON CHESS CLUB meets 4:30-6:30 p.m. Wednesdays at the Sylvan Way Kitsap Regional Library. More on the socials @bremertonchessclub and krl.org
THE WEST SOUND CHESS CLUB meets 6-9 p.m. Wednesdays at Whiskey Gulch Coffeepub in Port Orchard. More on the socials @westsoundchessclub and at https://chessand.beer
