La Maîtresse des Échecs - by Adam Carlton (Part 1 of 6)

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1: The First Day: Daniel

Daniel Brown, aged 24, spent the flight to Carcassonne playing Stockfish on his phone. It could have been Komodo but he preferred Stockfish when it came to end-game practice. Not that he expected to need any real preparation against Ms Schelling. That chess wonder-child was not taken seriously, not by real chess professionals: her sometime wins against the odds assumed by all to be flukes.

People think of chess as a cold, objective thing, that players are efficient automata. In reality nothing could be further from the truth. Spirit, élan, is everything: even the experts may make frightful blunders.

But that, thought Daniel, did not apply to him.

Daniel was dressed, as always, in a plain grey suit which had seen many better days. His shirt was worn at the collar, his shoes scuffed and his tie held evidence of previous meals. Most would say he had ‘loser’ written all over him - and had he lacked his peculiar talent, that would have been most decidedly correct. The cabin crew - who did not know who he was - wondered how this junior clerk had somehow ended up in business class.

Must have been some last minute mix-up, they decided: he’d gotten lucky.

2: The First Day: Petra

Petra Schelling did not fly to the French national chess championship. She was driven by her parents all the way from her home in Bavaria. Hans Schelling was a former IBM engineer and chess master who had worked on the abortive productisation of the famous DeepBlue chess program. IBM had got this, like so much else, completely wrong and Hans became embittered. When his growing daughter Petra showed aptitude, Hans was determined to amplify her abilities to the limits of his engineering skills. No-one now wins at chess without access to chess machines; Petra’s father was able to source and configure the best.

Someone once asked disingenuously, ‘Why are there separate men’s and women’s games in chess?’ There is of course a third category: machines. The last time a human being won against the top-ranked machine was in 2005; since then the machines have been barred from human contests.

Why do people persist? Because chess is, above all, an arena for the very human contestation of skill, nerve and character. Players routinely spook each other out: threaten, intimidate, stare at each other. Male and female dominance strategies are rather different; perhaps this is the reason for gender segregation. But in these enlightened times such categorisation no longer washes. The championship in Carcassonne for the trophy of France was open: gender neutral.

And so to Petra’s mother. By background Anne-Marie was a psychologist who freelanced as coach to high-performing women. No-one was better placed to help Petra with glass ceilings, aggressive males and other pitfalls of elite chess. It helped that Petra was an apple not far fallen from her parents’ tree. She had her mother’s good looks and her father’s systems thinking. She was focused, persistent and not altogether agreeable.

This dream team made its tortuous way westwards, tracking the Mediterranean coast of France.

3: The First Day: the Game

The tournament consisted of three games, to be held in the Basilique Saint Nazaire within the medieval walled city. The dais had been set up in front of the altar, spotlights playing upon the table, the chess board, the two chess clocks and the seats for the players. The audience - the press, organisers and selected fans - were seated in the body of the church facing an elevated screen which would show the state of play.

Daniel had taken his place twenty five minutes early at 1.35 pm - he hated to be late for anything - and was still engrossed with Stockfish. He was keen not to waste time before the match-officials took his phone away. The first warning of her arrival was a spreading hush, the hubbub of the hoi polloi in the nave fading as she led her parents through a side entrance, her passage marked by strobe-like flashes from the photographers. She wore a burgundy trouser suit which hugged her buxom figure in a silken embrace. Elegant in her high heels, she offered views of her painted fingernails to the assembled throng.

They lapped it up.

Daniel was perhaps the only person there entirely oblivious. Never very observant at the best of times, his mind was cluttered still with end-games. It was a real effort to drag himself away, to absently acknowledge his opponent and to discover he would be playing black and therefore second (the weaker role).

She moved - a standard opening - and he started his clock. Now he was in his element. Where normal folk would have observed just a jumble of pieces, for him the board was a structured and familiar landscape - one which was malleable, as if he had plate tectonics and millions of years in his control. Moves came and went as the board topography flexed under his sure command. Petra was competent, that much he implicitly conceded, granting her a measure of respect, but so conventional. In less than forty moves it was over and Petra had flipped her king.

She would now have to win both of the two final games to triumph.

After a tedious debrief with organisers and the press, Daniel went for a long walk following the ancient and picturesque Voie Médiévale to recover his spirits. Social interaction had tired him. He looked forward to a meal alone in his room followed by an early night.

Back in her parents’ room, Petra went into a huddle with Hans and Anne-Marie. She was not upset - far from it. A fly on the wall (there were none) might have concluded she was almost merry as were her parents. There was a detailed discussion of tactics for the second game the following afternoon and then the family headed off to a local restaurant for a good meal. After that, Petra, with some new friends she had just made, headed off to the disco.

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The full story text (part two of my novel) is also available here:

• "Donatien's Children" (2022) - as a PDF, and
• "Donatien's Children" (2022) - as a formatted book on Amazon for easier reading.

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