num_pages: 224
description: Sasha Chapin is a victim of chess. Like countless amateurs before him--Albert Einstein Humphrey Bogart Marcel Duchamp--the game has consumed his life and his mind. First captivated by it as a member of his high school chess club his passion was rekindled during an accidental encounter with chess hustlers on the streets of Kathmandu. In its aftermath he forgot how to care about anything else. He played at all hours for weeks at a time. Like a spurned lover he tried to move on but he found the game more seductive the more he resisted it.And so he thought if he can't defeat his obsession he had to succumb to it. All the Wrong Moves traces Chapin's rollicking two-year journey around the globe in search of glory. He travels to tournaments in Bangkok and Hyderabad. He seeks out a mentor in St. Louis a grandmaster whose personality is half rabbi and half monk and who offers cryptic wisdom and caustic insults (you're the best player in your chair). His story builds toward the Los Angeles Open where Chapin is clearly outmatched and yet no less determined not to lose.Along the way he chronicles the highs and lows of his fixation driven on this quest by lust terror and the elusive possibility of victory. Stylish inventive and laugh-out-loud funny All the Wrong Moves is more than a work of history or autobiography. It's a celebration of the purity violence and beauty of the game.
language: English
title: All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir About Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything
publisher: Doubleday