True Wood: A rebel pawn's tale
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. The games, the chess-players, the books, and the events involved all exist and/or have taken place.
The game of Ch.6 can be followed with the fixed gameviewer in the top right corner of this page.
Preface
1. The Wood Legacy
2. Dinner Civilities
3. Gary's Rebellion
4. The Package
5. Down the Rabbit Hole
6. Boxing Day in Almaty
7. After the Match
8. Epilogue
I’m not writing these memoires because I’d find myself all that important. In fact I think of myself as normal and uninteresting, like most people my age. No, I’m writing this because I’m living in and witnessing strange times, and I have a family history to share with whoever wishes to read this.
My name is Felicity Josephine Wood. I was born on 26 June 2005 in the town of Ipswich. I have a brother Gary, who is two years older than me. Gary has been the best brother I could’ve hoped for. He once landed himself into trouble because he diagonally tripped a boy from my class who pulled my hair.
My great-great-grandfather Jacques Wood started the pawnbroker business Woods & Son in 1930. The business went from father to son, and under my father’s leadership the company made its way into the High Society of Chess Men of the Crown, which is the highest rung of success in our business branch. My dad took over in 1989 as the head of the firm, and Mom takes care of the finances as well as most of the research.
My father, who used to serve as the g2-pawn in the British championships of 1982, always showed Gary and me the games of some of the greatest chess-players in history. To anyone who’d want to listen, Dad would boast that while it may seem to be the victory of the central pawns, the queens, the minor pieces, and everyone else, it was always the g-pawn that guaranteed the victory. His ultimate proof, and the proudest moment of his career, was his role in this game between Tony Miles and Tony Kosten, and I could watch this game unfold time and time again:
Life at our place wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, however. For one, Gary wanted to pursue his own path instead of joining the family business. This often lead to reprehension by Dad, who had arranged everything to enable Gary to follow in his g2-footsteps. I've chosen the path of research too, but at the time of the events I was still in highschool.
The week in which things reached their ultimate low is etched into my memory. It started on Monday 17 October 2022. I came home from school right in time to witness Gary storming out of the living room, slamming the door, almost trampling me up, and stamping up the stairs, routinely skipping the first step.
I hesitantly made my way into the living room. “What happened?” I asked Dad.
“It’s Gary,” sighed Mom, who came in to serve us tea. “He failed his calculation exam today.”
As I walked further into the room, I saw that there were sheets of paper scattered all over the floor. “Your brother has been spending more time with that nonsense than he had on his education,” my father said icily.
As I picked them up, I saw that Gary had been making annotations on chess-games that I’d never seen before. I didn’t have time to read them right away, so when my father was taking the first sip of his cup of tea, I quickly pocketed them. I only saw a few words at the end of the first page:
That evening, the atmosphere at the dinner table was as brittle as it’s never been before. Mom had done her best to prepare Gary’s favourite dish, mushroom soup, but he seemed to have lost his appetite completely. He lethargically stirred in his bowl but didn’t bring the spoon to his mouth.
“How is the soup, Gary, dear?” Mom asked.
Gary shrugged. “Alright, I suppose,” he said tonelessly.
“Eat something, Gary,” Mom said warmly, trying to encourage him, “it’s your favourite meal, isn’t it?”
“I’m not hungry,” Gary grunted.
“Eat something.” My father sounded harsh and strict. “It’s good food, and we never let good food go to waste. You’re making your mother miserable.”
Gary rolled his eyes and adjusted by placing his elbow onto the table and resting his head on his hand.
I glared at my father’s furious face in bewildered disbelief. “That’s not fair!” I shouted. “How can you say such a disgusting-”
“Be quiet!!” my father bellowed.
The silence that followed felt as if someone had just fired a gun.
“Gary, you eat your soup.”
“No.”
“Then clean up your bowl.”
“I’m not your slave, dad.” Gary slid his chair back and got up. Dad got up, but Gary was already out of the room.
“Don’t you have homework to do, Felicity, dear?” Mom asked me. It wasn’t a question but an order. Through the wall I could hear that Gary was watching something, but I couldn't make out what it was about. It sounded like a young Italian woman, but that’s all I was able to tell.
I decided to leave my homework for what it was and have a quick look at some of the games that Gary had been analysing.
When I was looking through these papers, I heard my mom walking up the stairs. She knocked twice before entering Gary’s room. I quickly grabbed a book and pretended to be reading, just in case anyone would come bursting into my room, and laid my ear to the wall to try to hear what my mom and Gary were talking about. I couldn’t make out much, but I heard my mom pleading while Gary clearly said “No. It’s my life, and I want to make my own choices. I’m not a baby anymore.”
My mom knocked on my door and peaked in to ask if I wanted to come round for tea. I said I’ll be there in a minute, but that I was doing my homework. “Strange homework you’re doing, then,” she said, pointing at the book I was reading. I turned the book cover and only now realised I’d picked up James Schuyler’s Your Opponent is Overrated. Chapter fourteen no less! Good job, Felicity! Really great!
After tea I went upstairs to give Gary his game analyses back. I entered his room and quickly saw him collapse the window on his laptop. “WHAT-oh, it’s you.”
“Can I come in?”
Gary made a hand gesture that indicated as much as ‘Sure, if you should.’ I laid the folder on his desk. He looked sideways at it and said, “Thanks.”
“Preparing for action, then?”
“What? How would you know?”
“I didn’t, but you just gave yourself away right there.”
Gary chuckled and pointed to his bed requesting me to sit down. “Is Dad still mad with me?”
I nodded.
Gary sighed deeply. “Why doesn’t he understand? The career that he wants me to pursue, I hate it. I really, really hate it. It’s ‘oh-so-steady, oh-so-reliable.’ Boring. Sitting still and doing nothing, like a compliance officer at the stock market. No fun, no action, no stories to tell my children later. No, sir. Me, Gary Wood, the coward sitting stationary on g2 for the whole game because he went to college. No thanks.”
I saw in his eyes that he was sincere. There was no hesitation in his manner at all.
“Whom were you watching on Twitch just now?”
“Oh, that,” he said in a bad attempt to sound nonchalantly, “that’s a Twitch-streamer.”
“Your new crush?” I know that Gary had developed a parasocial relationship before, and I found it to be preposterous and awkward before anything else.
“No,” he said quickly.
“Then why did you close the window so quickly as I walked in?”
Gary paused for a second, took a deep breath, and asked, “Can you keep a secret, Fliss?”
I nodded.
Gary leaned in to talk more quietly. “She’s a WFM from Italy. She’s brilliant!”
“But what’s the big deal, then, if she’s not your crush?”
“Uhm,” Gary said somewhat nervously, “her play is, shall we say, unconventional. But she's dating a GM, so... Here, check out this one.” And he showed me a game that this Italian WFM played with white.
“Please don’t tell Dad. He’ll kill me.”
“Okay,” I said. “Pinky-swear I won’t tell Dad.”
“Thanks, Fliss! Oh, and if it’s not too much to ask: on Thursday I’ll be receiving a package. If I’m not at home, would you please get it off the mat before Dad finds it?”
That Thursday I was far from relaxed. Mom had already been probing whether I was alright and why I was staring out the window all the time. I don’t think that my yes was all that convincing. Dad looked suspiciously at me all the time. I wish I could’ve been anywhere else. And all the while I was waiting for that package that Gary had ordered that I knew Dad would disapprove of.
When the mail finally arrived, I jumped up quickly to get it. I ran to the door to find a letter to Dad, two advertisement flyers, and there it was: an envelope for Gary. I got my backpack and managed to stuff it in quickly. Whew! That was that! Now all I needed to do was to get up the stairs quietly and hand over the…
“What is it that you just put in your backpack, Fliss?” came Dad’s cold voice from just behind me. “Give it to me.”
“I-i-it’s nothing, Dad. W-wrong delivery.”
“Now then, if it’s wrongly delivered, you’d have no problems showing me what it is.” Dad stretched out his hand and looked expectantly at me. I had no choice. I withdrew the envelope with Gary’s name on it out of my backpack and handed it to him. “This isn’t yours, now, is it?”
“N-no, Dad.”
“Gary can open this with all of us present. If it’s nothing bad, it’s nothing bad.”
The minutes went by so slowly that it felt like the clock was running backwards. When he finally walked into the door, Dad handed him the envelope. “Open it.”
Gary looked bewildered at Dad, and then shot me a very brief accusatory look that I could only answer apologetically. I felt that something was about to go horribly wrong.
“What is this?” Dad said as Gary withdrew a book from the envelope. Dmitry Kryakvin’s Attacking with g2-g4.
“Going cowboy, are we?” snarled Dad. “After everything that we’ve done for you, you’re throwing away your future for some…some stupid hoax? This is how you repay the love of me and your mother?”
I pressed my hands against my temples and wished I could’ve vanished there and then.
“Look around you, Gareth! Generations of your ancestors have worked very hard for all that you see now. Family business. Tradition. Honour. But all of that is no longer good enough for poor little misunderstood Gary, is it?” snarled my father. “You’re making the family name to shame!”
“Oh yeah, family business. Like sitting still on g2 hoping that nothing will ever happen! Sitting still, while all the pieces go on and sacrifice themselves for the most brilliant combinations. They get all the glory. Do you know how it makes me feel, Dad? No? Like a bloody coward!”
“How often have I shown you that Miles-Kosten game? Where I had to defend the king against all kinds of threats?”
“Yes sure! You did nothing at all. You’ve never been any further than g3. So heroic of you! So brave!”
Gary and Dad were only inches apart now. The fury in their eyes was mutual.
“You don’t even know what bravery is, Gary! You think that going two squares on move 1 is bravery? It sure as hell isn’t! It’s nothing else than dumb youthfully arrogant bravado!”
“Why can't I move two steps at the beginning? Eddie and Derek move two squares all the time. Even Charlie is allowed to! That geek who doesn’t even bother to study one line of theory!”
“It’s reckless and doesn’t even control the centre. Haven’t you learned anything?”
“It’s not reckless! It’s GM-approved!”
“Like that girl that you watch on Twitch all the time? Come on, Gary, grow up! She’s not a GM.”
“She’s dating one!”
“And does he approve of it?”
“She’s not the only one, Dad! GM Spyridon Skembris plays it, and so does your old friend IM Michael Basman! He even wrote a book on it!”
“AHHH! Good old Michael Basman! He’d easily have been world elite if it weren’t for such stupid stuff!”
“He beat Grandmasters with 1.g4, Dad!” I knew this to be true:
“How many have you beaten?”
“I’ve proven my worth over and over and over again, Gary! But that doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? You think that you know everything so much better! But I’ve seen people like you in my day, Gary, and they never end well!”
“Perfect! I’ll be the first to become the g4 star. You mark my words!”
“YOU WILL NOT!! You’ll continue your education and do as I say. You should be thanking me on bare knees for all I’ve done for you. All I’ve sacrificed so that you can survive!”
“To hell with surviving! There’s no glory in sitting there to enable everyone else to become stars. I don’t care anymore about surviving, ok? This is MY life, MY time, MY glory!”
“Gareth Harrison Wood, you listen to me!” my father shouted in a threatening tone. When you were addressed by your full name, you knew you were in deep trouble.
“No, I won’t listen to you!” my brother shouted back. “Leave me alone!” Gary snatched Kryakvin’s book out of Dad’s hands, stormed out of the living room starting with one large step, and slammed the front door shut.
We had hoped for Gary to return around dinner, after having cooled down for a bit. But Gary did not return for dinner. And not the next day. He refused to answer his phone, he shut down all his social media profiles. He seemed to have vanished off the face of the Earth.
Dad's normally rigid manner started changing up. He realised at last that there is something more important than your personal ambitions and success, and that's the people that you love and care for. Reflecting back on his own youth, he too used to have a rebellious streak before continuing the Wood legacy. Gary wasn't so different from him after all, and Dad didn't need to understand everything about his son to appreciate him for the unique human being that he is.
Mom spent almost every spare moment trying to contact Gary, begging him to come home. Gary answered the phone frequently and was so decent as to let Mom know that he was okay, so that she wouldn't worry sick about him. But we all felt that he should come home.
None of his friends had any clue as to where he might have gone. And so I started to do some digging online. I wasn’t happy with what I saw. It turned out that he had been into this g4 rabbit hole very deeply. The online environments that Gary frequented greatly reminded me of those religious cults that I’d heard about.
One video in particular stood out. It was one of those hour-long presentations with animated slideshows of hands drawing pictures with a text that boils down to “This priceless secret that the elite don’t want you to know will be gone tomorrow, but act now and your life will change overnight from trash to flash for only $497.” My gosh! Did Gary dive head-first into this garbage?
Two months in, I received a phone call from Gary.
“Gaz! Where are you? I miss you so much!”
“I miss you too, Fliss. But please hear me out for a second because I don’t have much time. Have you seen that news flash that Anish Giri has nicked another pawn at a chess set?”
“Yes, I have. Why?”
“They’ve been looking for a replacement, and they’ve taken me on the team.”
“What? But that’s amazing!”
“Yes, thanks! And they’re very interested in my ideas too!”
“You mean that Instant Knockout with the Killer Grob stuff?”
“Haha, no, I'm over that. Those 1.g4 people are really nutters. We don’t bother with rabid nonsense if not even Stockfish and Komodo manage to keep white’s position together.”
Thank goodness! It felt as if my lungs finally opened up again. Whew!
“No, but we’re definitely working on something cool that's based on literature from both Kryakvin and Lars Bo Hansen's How Chess Games are Won and Lost. I can’t spill the beans just yet, but it’s approved by Stockfish and a very famous GM whose name I’m not yet allowed to disclose. I’d love to tell you more, but it’d be better to show you.”
“How?”
“Keep an eye out for the mail tomorrow. I’ve arranged everything with my team, and I’d love for you to be there. Please give my love to Mom and Dad. Love you, Fliss!”
Gary’s mail arrived three days later. A short letter to Dad apologising for his rude behaviour, and three flight tickets to…
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We had to hurry. Round 4 of the World Rapid Chess Championship was about to start. Gary had been in touch with the organisers to arrange the seats for us. It was the weirdest playing hall I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t just a normal playing hall looking like a lot of people were doing their school exams in pairs against one another. It was a stadium. A boxing ring of sorts. But no pieces were there to be seen yet.
The speaker announced: “Playing with white: the reigning World Classical Champion, all the way from Norway: MAGNUS CARLSEN!” The stadium erupted in a cheer like I had seen never before in a chess match. Carlsen walked on the stage with his sixteen chess-pieces. And among them was…
“GARY!!” I shouted and pointed at my brother, looking all smug in his white shirt.
The speaker continued: “And playing with the black pieces, the reigning World Rapid Champion, all the way from Uzbekistan: NODIRBEK ABDUSATTOROV!” And there he was, the Uzbek national hero, with his own set of sixteen chess-pieces. I had been a fan of him for a long time, but today I’d be rooting for nothing else than the white g-pawn.
“The two gentlemen shake hands and take their respective sides of the board. And now, let the game BEGIN!” And with a hit on the gong, the game started.
Carlsen opened with 1.b2-b3, the Nimzo-Larsen Attack. That was definitely an unconventional move by any standards. My father gasped. “Maybe they’ll turn this into some variation of the English,” I said hopefully. “You never know; Carlsen always has an ace up his sleeve.”
By move 9 the game had transposed into a type of hedgehog position for white. Black tried to open up the centre with 9…d5, but Carlsen’s pawns sitting on a3, b3, d3 and e3 kept black’s pieces at bay.
“Can anyone please explain to me what the hell is happening here?” Dad asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but Gary definitely seems to be enjoying himself. Look, black played the pawn to f6. That’s a commitment because it loosens up the light squares!”
“Yes but there’s no way that white can get to it,” Dad said. “The bishop is behind its own pawn, the queen can’t get to the diagonal either.”
“Abdusattorov plays his bishop to f5!” the speaker shouted. “That’s very remarkable!
And it was. It wouldn’t lose a piece to 13.e4, because black would be able to attack white’s bishop with the knight. But it was in the air, and Carlsen prevented it with a very cool and innocuous-looking rook move. Gary in the meantime was hyping up the audience.
“Wait…” I said. “If black wants to be consistent, he has to move the bishop back to g6 because else he’d lose a tempo. And then Gary can come into action and clamp up on black’s entire kingside structure.”
And sure enough: accompanied by a roaring audience, Gary moved up two squares. For half a minute, the audience were chanting his name: GA-RY! GA-RY!
On the very next move, black’s queen attacked him, but Carlsen took another preventive measure. My mom put her hands before her eyes, but I said, “They can’t take him because then black’s whole game falls apart!”
It took a few extra moves before Gary was actually defended, but after 21.Rdg1 the idea behind his bold double step was finally becoming visible. By not clashing either in the centre or on the queenside, Carlsen had given his opponent no targets to attack. At the same time he had doubled the baseline support for my brother, who could now start to wreak havoc in black’s position. Brilliant! I’m sure that Dad would never have found this on his own. I looked over to my right, and I saw Dad look intensely at the situation on the board.
When Carlsen eventually played his e-pawn to e4, Dad was finally catching on. “I don’t believe this! It’s really going to work! Everyone on the team is making sure that Gary gets a clear run!”
The speaker agreed with Dad’s assessment: “Abdusattorov is doing his very best to complicate the situation on the queenside, but there seems to be nothing there! And what is that brave g-pawn doing?” It was move 27, and yet again he hyped up the audience as he advanced one move further.
But here came the most intense moment of the game. Everyone could feel it. Abdusattorov had just placed his knight in the middle of the board. This was the make-or-break moment for Gary and his team. Would Carlsen do it? 28.Ng5? The entire stadium watched with bated breath….until…
28.Ng5!
Carlsen went for it! Gary has been doing more on g6 than merely standing there looking impressive. He’s supporting the f7-square for the knight, which would happily give a very painful check on that square.
Carlsen had missed an easier win when he played 29.Nf7+. I looked at him, and I must have imagined it, but I could swear that I saw him smile and wink. It was a wink for Gary. The audience were now chanting “GA-RY! GA-RY!” almost in unison. It was surreal. It was magical. Gary was on g6, but SNATCH! there went black’s queen on f7 and SNATCH! there went black’s rook on e8. Gary made it all the way across the board. The speaker shouted out his name, the chanting reached an incredible peak, until…
BANG!
The opponent’s light-square bishop had had enough and knocked Gary over. I hated that black light-square bishop even more than French players hate their light-square bishop. And I wasn’t the only one: the cheers abruptly shifted to BOO-noises. While all the rest of black’s pieces were in agony over what had just happened to the Man of the Match, the bishop was targeted by all kinds of projectiles from the spectators. The bishop had to dance around and around to avoid getting hit.
Baffled at how the game had derailed and degenerated into the mayhem that he now saw before him, Nodirbek Abdusattorov decided to call it quits. He paused the clocks and stretched out his hand to congratulate Magnus Carlsen on this most epic victory.
The stadium erupted into a deafening cheer. White’s pieces were celebrating their win with a wave of triumphant air punches that were reciprocated by the audience. When his name was called out loud by the speaker, Carlsen entered the podium surrounded by a plethora of fans and enthusiasts. He took the microphone and said:
Shhh! The rest of the players are still playing.
Next day’s news article would read that Carlsen is one of the very few who really listens to the demands of his pieces. But we didn’t care at that time. All we cared for was to get backstage to the dressing rooms and get our rendezvous with the true hero of the game. As we walked up to the door, he emerged through it.
For a moment, Gary and Dad both stood transfixed. I looked at Gary, Dad, and Gary again, anxious what would happen. Slowly but surely their faces lit up and they fell into each other’s arms. “I’m so proud of you, son,” said Dad. “You’re not only a real hero, but you’re also a real Wood.”
Gary came home with us after the World Rapid Championships had finished. He and Dad reconciled, and are now working together. In their work, they discovered that their ideas aren't all that far apart after all: how different their methods might seem to be on the surface, they discovered that deep down they both wanted the same thing. It meant a partial overhaul of the business, which now combines Gary's youthful energy with Dad's steady time-tested principles. Their collaborative efforts have helped to keep the business up to date and a leading pioneer to present-day practice of pawn play.
