Page 25 of Niccolo

“She’s right,” Papa said.

Pietro stopped laughing, and his face went blank with shock.

“Show me, Sofia,” Papa said. “I’ll turn the board around so you can play my pieces, and I’ll play Pietro’s. Pietro, give her your seat.”

Pietro looked highly offended as he surrendered his chair and I climbed up into it.

Four moves later, I checkmated my father.

Pietro wasn’t laughing anymore.

Of course, I didn’t think I won because I was any good at chess – just that Pietro had bumbled into an idiotic position.

“Let’s you and I play,” my father told me as he reset the pieces. “From the beginning.”

I played a game with him – and was dejected when he won in 45 moves.

“Again,” he told me, then called out to my mother in the other room. “Maria, come in here – you have to see this!”

“I’m busy,” she shouted back.

“Maria, seriously – get in here!”

My mother walked in with an annoyed look on her face. She hated chess. “What?”

“Watch.”

I played my father a second time. He won in 52 moves.

I was upset – but my mother looked almost as shocked as Pietro.

“Again,” Papa commanded.

We played a third time, and I lost once more – although it took 60 moves this time.

“I guess I’m not very good,” I murmured.

“‘Not very good’?” my father repeated in amazement, then boomed,“‘Not very GOOD’?Sofia, you just performed better than every student who’s ever come over here. You played better than several tournament opponents I’ve faced recently – and they had been playing chess fordecades.”

“So… I’m okay?” I asked timidly.

“You are better than ‘okay’ – you are a prodigy!”

I didn’t know what a prodigy was. I just assumed it was somebody who knew how to play chess.

“But you need to learn how to think strategically.” There was a glint in my father’s eye as he said, “And I will be the one to teach you.”

That was how it all began.

12

On weekdays after school, Papa would instruct me for a couple of hours. On Saturdays and Sundays, it was usually much longer. Sometimes four or five hours a day.

He taught me how to plan five steps ahead – and, more importantly, how to deduce what youropponentwas planning five steps ahead.

He showed me different types of attacks: forks, skewers, pins, and deflection.

He taught me combinations of moves with strange names: the Caro-Kahn Defense. The Nimzowitsch-Larsen Attack. The Latvian Gambit.

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