Underhanded Chess

By Jerry Sohl

A HILARIOUS HANDBOOK OF DEVIOUS DIVERSIONS AND STRATAGEMS FOR WINNING AT CHESS

With tongue in cheek and laughter aforethought, Jerry Sohl takes his readers on a merry romp through all the deceits and tricks of one-upmanship as it is practiced in the game of chess. Drawing from his own experiences, he sets out in amusing detail a host of put-offs, come-ons, psychological maneuverings, lures, and frauds to accomplish checkmate. All illustrated with drawings by artist Roy Schlemme.

The author's inventiveness is limitless. All kinds of ploys are carefully described: the amazing effectiveness of reverse polarity; adopting some of Bobby Fischer's tactics; the Freudian gambit; the Blencher; the Hassled Castle; befuddling rule fanatics; talking your way to victory; coffeehouse counter-gambits; when and how to lose; advanced duplicity; and chess of the last resort.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1: THE FIRST MOVE
2: PRELIMINARIES AND PREPARATIONS
3: THE PROPER SPIRIT
4: HOW TO TALK A GOOD GAMBIT
5: HOW TO BEFUDDLE RULE FANATICS
6: HOW TO PLAY AGAINST WEIRDOS
7: COFFEEHOUSE CHESS COUNTERGAMBITS
8: WHEN TO LOSE
9: ADVANCED DUPLICITY
10: DESPERATE MOVES CHESS OF THE LAST RESORT
APPENDIX: USEFUL TRIVIA

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReAnimus Press
• Release date: Dec 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311764447

Jerry Sohl

Jerry Sohl is best known for the numerous scripts he wrote for Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, etc. He wrote over two dozen books, mostly, science fiction and horror but spanning all genres, including several acclaimed mainstream novels (e.g. THE LEMON EATERS), romance, and humor books such as UNDERHANDED CHESS.

Book preview

UNDERHANDED CHESS

A HILARIOUS HANDBOOK OF DEVIOUS DIVERSIONS AND STRATAGEMS FOR WINNING AT CHESS

by

JERRY SOHL

Produced by ReAnimus Press

Other books by Jerry Sohl:

Costigan s Needle

Night Slaves

The Mars Monopoly

One Against Herculum

The Time Dissolver

The Transcendent Man

I, Aleppo

The Altered Ego

The Anomaly

Death Sleep

The Odious Ones

Point Ultimate

The Haploids

Prelude to Peril

The Resurrection of Frank Borchard

The Lemon Eaters

The Spun Sugar Hole

Underhanded Bridge

Night Wind

Black Thunder

Dr. Josh

Blowdry

Mamelle

Kaheesh

© 2012, 1973 by Jerry Sohl. All rights reserved.

http://ReAnimus.com/authors/jerrysohl

Illustrated by Roy Schlemme

Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

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Table of Contents

1: THE FIRST MOVE

2: PRELIMINARIES AND PREPARATIONS

3: THE PROPER SPIRIT

4: HOW TO TALK A GOOD GAMBIT

5: HOW TO BEFUDDLE RULE FANATICS

6: HOW TO PLAY AGAINST WEIRDOS

7: COFFEEHOUSE CHESS COUNTERGAMBITS

8: WHEN TO LOSE

9: ADVANCED DUPLICITY

10: DESPERATE MOVES CHESS OF THE LAST RESORT

APPENDIX: USEFUL TRIVIA

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1: THE FIRST MOVE

Moral victories do not count.

International Grandmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakover

Ordinarily you’re a pretty normal guy. You’re pleasant and likable. Thoughts of mayhem haven’t crossed your mind since Billy Grogan stole Nancy Parmalee from you in the eighth grade.

Then one day you play chess with Arthur Merepoint and he hands you a severe drubbing, and you know he’s not that good. On the way home you find yourself gnashing your teeth, anger rides high in your throat like bile, and you can think of nothing else but how nice it would be to murder Arthur Merepoint. The sweet-tempered you visualizes how that victorious gloat in Arthur’s eyes could be changed to sheer horror-picture terror as your hands, almost at their own bidding, tighten about the flaccid flesh of Arthur’s neck. You are cold to his appeals for his life, just as he was cold to your plea that he wouldn’t be so unkind as to take your Queen with that Knight you didn’t see lurking nearby which gave him the game. Where did that Knight come from, anyway?

Suddenly you realize what you’re doing. You’re fantasizing stuff for which you could be stuck away in jail if you actually did it: Murder One. You’re appalled at yourself. How did mild-mannered you suddenly turn into a would-be killer? Before you even begin analyzing how, you wonder if you should start taking karate lessons. Or maybe you should cancel those psychiatric appointments for what the doctor has expressed as repressed hostility and just let go. You suspect a beast resides in you closer to the surface than you thought. That night you can’t get to sleep. You have to take a couple pills before the leering face of Arthur Merepoint fades from your mind’s eye.

The next morning it’s a toss-up: a muscle-building course or memorizing a million opening, middle, and end games so that you can beat Arthur Merepoint. Except—and the thought keeps tugging at you—he’s not that good, is he?

If you have experienced these feelings (and what loser hasn’t), you are not alone. You represent half the chess players in the world: the losers of all the games. After all, nobody likes to lose. Except if there’s something wrong with him. And there are some people who are like that.

The thing finally comes down to this: How can you end up on the winning side? The answer is simpler than you think. Instead of studying the game, study everything surrounding the game, for that is where winning is at. Arthur Merepoint doesn’t play as well as you, but he does understand how to win, and that’s the difference between you.

After playing chess for nearly forty years, I stumbled onto certain diversions and stratagems about twenty years ago and, with exceptions I will go into later, have lost few games since. Like Capablanca and other international grandmasters, I might have dozed at the board, but I have never been checkmated; we all resign first. I must confess, however, that at first I lost a few friends. They were mostly the ones who went home gnashing their teeth for a change, visions of revenge and slow death for me dancing in their heads, to spend a sleepless night wondering where they went wrong (He isn’t that good a player!). So I must warn you that if you follow the directions given in this book, temper your playing with justice lest you lose all your chess-playing friends. Unless, of course, your psychological makeup is such that you simply must mercilessly crush all you meet (in which case, continue seeing your psychiatrist).

One of the prevailing myths was that chessmasters were more than a step removed from the rest of us, that they were heavily bearded, wore thick-lensed glasses, and ate, drank, and slept chess.

WHERE THE GAME REALLY IS

Until Bobby Fischer won the world championship, one of the prevailing myths of our time was that chess masters were more than a step removed from the rest of us, that they were heavily bearded, wore thick-lensed glasses, and ate, drank, and slept chess. They were supposed to be cold, remote, sexless, and, like Einstein, able to execute brilliant moves but somehow incapable of adding up their grocery bills.

Then came Bobby Fischer. I suppose Fischer will become a legend and further perpetuate at least some of the old myths, the media (God) willing (and able). He will no doubt continue to be referred to as enigmatic, reclusive, and eccentric. It was Bobby Fischer, however, who—to the delight of the crowd—turned pop singer at a nightclub in Yugoslavia in 1959 during the Fourth Candidates’ Tournament at Bled. It was Bobby Fischer who ate salty herrings when he played Boris Spassky in Iceland, a ploy that surely must have unnerved the titleholder. It was Bobby Fischer who put championship chess on a paying basis; he might even eventually play a million-dollar tournament in Las Vegas. And Bobby was able to match puns on a television special with Bob Hope. An enigmatic man would hardly do all these things.

No, what Fischer has done for us all is to lift the heavy veil that has surrounded championship chess, shine lights in remote corners, and show us something that we suspected for a long time but never were quite sure of: The game is not all on the board. Fischer has shown us that international grandmasters are just as human as the rest of us, subject to the same frailties, prejudices, fears, uncertainties, concerns, and suspicions.

IT’S NOT HOW YOU PLAY

And therein lies the secret. Knowing it, we ought to be able to construct (or reconstruct) our game skill to think less about Queen’s Gambit Declined and Sicilian Defense and more about what we can do to win before, during, and after the game, using simple strategies that are not part of the game at all but that will go a long way toward winning it.

A French proverb insists: You cannot play at chess if you are kindhearted. It should read: You cannot win at chess if you are kindhearted. To win, one must have a touch of the larcenist in his heart, the actor in his soul, the picaroon in his psyche, and the cozener in his brain.

Other proverbs are helpful: He who does nothing makes no mistakes (but he sure loses games).

He who risks nothing gains nothing. The way seems clear enough, doesn’t it? If your inclination is to win and get even with that cad who kicked sand in your face, read on.

We shall begin with simple techniques, most of them honest and permissible but seldom thought of in the heat of battle. From these we will proceed to the little gentlemanly deceits and ploys that are acceptable, if not actually expected, in matches. For those who need them, we’ll go on

Reviews for Underhanded Chess

[brucecoulson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Note: the majority of the ideas suggested are illegal in tournement play. However, this is a very funny book for anyone who's ever played chess and really, really wanted to win. i.e every chess player, ever. Even non-chess players might find the lengths that some players will go to to win entertaining.