Grandmaster Read Online Free PDF Page A

were playing in the warmth and comfort of our own living room. Also, there was nothing at stake—no money, no trophies, not even rating points.
    But the underlying vibe of the game didn’t stay friendly for long. I’d never thought of my father as particularly aggressive, but when he sat facing me at the chessboard that evening, his shoulders hunched slightly forward, his fingers knitted tightly together on the table while he scrutinized the pieces and sometimes glanced up at me, his intensity was tangible, and he seemed formidable and bent on annihilation.
    He also talked trash. Chess is supposed to be a silent game, and if someone annoys you with conversation during a tournament, you can raise your hand and wave over an official who will tell your opponent to zip his lip. But the only person I could have appealed to was my mom, who was futzing around the kitchen baking brownies and occasionally throwing surprised but pleased glances at us, as if to say, “Look at the two of you boys, having fun together! You should both be packing for your big trip tomorrow, but I’m not going to break this magical father-son moment.”
    I played my usual king’s pawn opening and he muttered, “Really?” and then, after he’d slammed his own king’s pawn forward two squares: “It only gets worse from here.” Soon he was on the edge of falling into an opening trap with a ridiculous nickname—the Fried Liver.
    I felt a little bad for him, because when I get someone into the Fried Liver I always destroy him. But at the same time, his aggressiveness seemed to be contagious, or maybe it was just the father-son rivalry kicking into high gear. I wanted to beat him and shut his trash-talking mouth. I wanted to put his army to the sword. “Maybe you have been away from chess a little too long,” I muttered, springing my trap.
    He glared back at me for half a second and then made an unexpected move, and I soon found that I was the one trapped. I wiggled and flailed, but in five moves I was hopelessly lost, and I soon knocked over my king. “You rule, Grandmaster. For now.”
    He held out his hand.
    I reached out and took it. I couldn’t remember ever shaking my father’s hand quite this way before. We had, of course, shaken hands many times in the past, but always for formal occasions, when our handshakes had a clear purpose. This wasn’t a congratulatory shake, or a consolatory shake—it was the handshake of two buddies who have just done something fun or, at least, something that’s supposed to be fun. He held the grip a few seconds longer than necessary and looked into my eyes. “Don’t be pissed off.”
    “I’ll get you next time.”
    He released my hand. “You do realize that I didn’t beat you at chess?” he asked.
    I looked back at him. “That wasn’t chess?”
    “Nope,” he said. “Chess is two minds doing fair battle. Chess is forcing your opponent to outthink you strategically and creatively. I didn’t have to think at all in that game because you never got me off a very well-known line. Why on earth do you play that opening?”
    “It was the first opening in the book,” I told him. “Most of the kids play it—at least the beginners.”
    “That,” he said, “is exactly why you shouldn’t play it. Especially against someone like me. The Giuoco Piano has been around for five hundred years. It’s been analyzed to death. And it’s sheer suicide to try to trap someone with the Fried Liver unless you know the Traxler Counter Gambit and all its subvariations.”
    “Guess I’ll have to study harder.”
    “Forget it,” he told me. “There are lots of kids out there who study chess openings for two hours a day. I know because I was one of them. If you play the main lines of the most common openings against them, they’ll beat the pants off you twenty times in a row without ever having to think of an original move.”
    “So what should I do?” I asked.
    “Play something sound but obscure. Choose an