On a passenger ship traveling from New York to Buenos Aires, a millionaire challenges the chess world champion Mirko Czentovic, who plays with a kind of mechanical precision, to a game for a fee. Dr. B., an Austrian emigrant traveling with them, intervenes with advice and thus achieves a draw for the challenger. He had been locked in a hotel room by the Gestapo, who arrested him, and hermetically sealed off from the outside world, spending months blindly playing 150 games in order to maintain his intellectual resistance. This one-sided mental exertion caused him to develop a nervous fever, which is why he was released. Now Dr. B. is playing again for the first time against an actual, albeit robotically reacting, opponent. In this game, he is only concerned with determining whether what he did back then during his imprisonment was still a game or already madness. He confidently beats the world champion in the first game, but, actually against his will, agrees to a rematch. During this second game, he is seized by the nervous fever again: he breaks off the game and will never touch a chessboard again.
Chess Story
Year
1943
Pages
104
Description
On a passenger ship traveling from New York to Buenos Aires, a millionaire challenges the chess world champion Mirko Czentovic, who plays with a kind of mechanical precision, to a game for a fee. Dr. B., an Austrian emigrant traveling with them, intervenes with advice and thus achieves a draw for the challenger. He had been locked in a hotel room by the Gestapo, who arrested him, and hermetically sealed off from the outside world, spending months blindly playing 150 games in order to maintain his intellectual resistance. This one-sided mental exertion caused him to develop a nervous fever, which is why he was released. Now Dr. B. is playing again for the first time against an actual, albeit robotically reacting, opponent. In this game, he is only concerned with determining whether what he did back then during his imprisonment was still a game or already madness. He confidently beats the world champion in the first game, but, actually against his will, agrees to a rematch. During this second game, he is seized by the nervous fever again: he breaks off the game and will never touch a chessboard again.
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