Part I: The Game
Respected by all but only truly understood by few, chess has seen a remarkable rise in popularity over the past year thanks in part to the global success of the Netflix original series The Queen’s Gambit and the rapid expansion of the online chess community. It’s easy to let your imagination run wild when imagining what it’s like to be a chess master. Maybe you think they have a flawless intuition that tells them what moves to make. Maybe you picture them seeing the pieces moving in their mind’s eye like FIDE World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. Or maybe you believe chess masters just have higher cognitive function. Such imaginative explanations are far from the full picture.
A chess game is played using a combination of calculation and pattern-recognition. Training involves understanding opening theory, middle-game tactics, and end-game principles. With modern chess engines—advanced software that attempts to calculate the strongest move in any position—and countless records of previously played games, there are a wealth of resources to pull from when learning the game. Masters wield both a deep knowledge of common sequences and a practiced skill for calculating in positions they don’t entirely recognize, and every master has their own unique style and story.
Part II: The Champion
Jennifer Yu ’25 was still in high school when she won the U.S. Women’s Chess Championship. How did Yu get to be a master and a champion? She waves away the idea that she’s a genius and instead suggests that a strong work ethic and long-term commitment helped her reach great heights. Starting at a chess club at the age of seven, she’s been playing ever since. “The more you play, the more your trajectory just goes upward,” she said. Since training and travelling for competitions is so time-consuming, Yu has often had to forgo other activities that interested her. “I had to drop a lot of other extracurriculars that I wanted to do,” she said.
Yu has been slightly disappointed by The Harvard Chess Club’s lack of prominence on campus—it didn’t hold meetings until over a month after the semester’s start and doesn’t currently have a set weekly meeting schedule.
“I’ve never been at a school with a prominent chess club. I felt like I’d come here and it would be something bigger, but it’s not,” she said. Harvard itself has made Yu’s chess career more difficult to manage: she had to skip this year’s U.S. Women’s Championship because of midterms.
With such a huge time commitment, chess often pushes its most competitive players towards spaces that can offer them some kind of financial return. “Classical” games provide players with the most time for considering moves, usually produce the most complex and beautiful positions, and generally dominate the highest-paid tournaments. Yu explained that Europe, as a result of a higher average standard of living and older chess history, offers the most opportunities to become a professional chess player and actually make money. She took a gap year because of the pandemic and spent it in Europe living with a chess-playing friend and participating in several tournaments.
As a result of her high level of play and time in the chess community, Yu has gotten to know some of the biggest celebrities in the chess world. “It’s not that big of a circuit, so everyone knows each other. You spend so much time with chess that you kind of grow up with those people,” Yu said. She is friends with professionals like the Botez sisters, Andrew Tang, and Nemo Zhou, who have each amassed thousands of followers on streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. She witnessed the explosive growth of the online chess community in real time through her friends. “Literally everyone I knew was getting into streaming,” she said.
Yu has her own plans for expanding her chess celebrity beyond simply winning competitions. “I’m trying to get more involved on the personality side of things,” she said. Yu has already written a number of chess-related articles, and she was able to spend some time commentating the championships she had to miss because of midterms. Her commentary was featured on Hikaru Nakamura’s YouTube channel. Nakamura is one of the best players in the world and has one of the largest online followings in the chess community.
Yu appreciates the role that media like The Queen’s Gambit and chess streams have played in bringing new players into the chess community. “A lot of people did get into [chess] over the past year, and I think that’s really cool,” she said.
The Queen’s Gambit also touches on a long-standing issue: sexism in chess. FIDE, the international chess federation, kept men and women’s tournaments entirely separate until the late 1980s. Similar to many professional sports, the prize pool for women’s tournaments is still just a small fraction of the offerings at male-dominated tournaments. Top players like Grandmasters Nigel Short and Garry Kasparov have made claims that women are simply less capable than men at chess. A few years ago, Short stated that it should be “graciously accepted as a fact” that men are better equipped to be professional chess players. Kasparov long claimed that women could not compete with men over the chessboard until he was beaten by Grandmaster Judit Polgar. His views have softened since.
Yu has personally experienced sexism in her chess career. “You can’t avoid it, but I try not to focus on it,” she said. The vast majority of the tournaments she competes in are co-ed, and she is often one of the only women. Yu reflected on how the media has played a role in perpetuating negative stereotypes about women in chess. “I did really badly in a tournament where I was the only woman, and of course they had to write an article about my performance. And a woman wrote the article!” As a woman in chess, Yu feels an unfair pressure to single-handedly rebuke sexist attitudes. “I’m not representing all women here,” she said.
Despite the difficulties that come with being a woman in chess, Yu is excited to keep playing and is ready to take her career to even greater heights. “I still have ambitions to improve. I want to win more championships,” she said. But first she had to see what competition Cambridge had to offer.
Part III: The Hustler
Billy is one of the most notorious chess players in Cambridge. He’s been playing chess for about 55 years, and he is currently homeless. He often plays at the chess boards outside of Harvard’s Smith Campus Center against random passersby and fellow chess enthusiasts that flock to Harvard Square. He plays either casually or for money, and he always brings a simultaneously entertaining and intimidating personality to each game.
Billy perfectly encapsulates the unique nature of street chess. Other regulars affectionately refer to him as the “Grandmaster of the Cheapo,” referring to the tricks he uses to quickly beat unprepared opponents. Yu explained this style of play as being characteristic of “blitz” games played on the street where both players have only a few minutes to make all of their moves. “[Hustlers] go for dirty tricks, the kind of stuff a real chess player would see if they looked for five seconds,” she said. Though cheap tricks are commonly used by hustlers, actual cheating is rare.
With regards to his favorite part of a chess game, Billy said, “I’m best at the middle-game because I’m creative. It’s like a symphony orchestra where every instrument is playing. And I’m an excellent conductor.” He tries to emulate World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer’s aggressive style of play. Fischer was the first American player to dominate against the Soviets, and widely considered to be one of the best players that ever lived. “I’ve studied every single game Bobby Fischer ever played,” Billy said.
Over the course of a game, Billy engages in mild trash-talking with the aim of distracting his opponents and making them question their moves. He also provides narration to lighten the mood of the game. “A lot of the people I play take it seriously, but even they can appreciate the humor I provide,” he said. His jokes also help soften the blow when he destroys more casual players. “I make people laugh so it hurts less when I beat up on them,” he said.
The Queen’s Gambit presents an image of a chess master that unlocks her abilities by consuming dangerous amounts of drugs. This behavior is not reflected in professional chess, with past masters like Boris Spassky lighting nothing more than a cigarette during a game—and generally to try and ease frustration with a lost position. Billy offered a different perspective. “I’m an impulsive player, and when I smoke weed, I’m not so impulsive,” he said. During high-speed “blitz” games, where players are more likely to make foolish errors, slowing down one’s pace may help them win.
Chess masters are generally used to quiet, patient games that require intense calculation and careful consideration. They may struggle against Billy in blitz games, where he plays for the clock as much as he plays for pieces and will use tricks from the very first moves to make his opponents burn their time. He’s not unfamiliar to facing professional players, and he’s always looking for a challenge.
Part IV: The Match
One night last week, Yu went to the Cambridge chess boards to play a three-game match against Billy—trying to “hustle the hustler.” Billy entered the three-game match under the impression that Yu was a relatively new player learning the game for a school project. (In fairness, Yu hasn’t been able to practice her chess very much recently, so Billy didn’t have to face her at her best.)
The difference between Yu and Billy’s style was evident from the first few moves of the first game. Yu moved the pieces smoothly and quietly, lightly tapping the clock to pass the turn. Billy moved pieces quickly, holding a cigarette in one hand and smacking the clock with the other. It didn’t take long for a small crowd to form and Yu’s cover to be blown. “She’s a real chess player, I can tell by the way she moves,” Billy said. One of the regulars even recognized her. “Is your last name Yu?” they asked.
But Yu did her best to stay anonymous. “I just went to chess club,” she responded. Unfortunately, it’s hard for a master to hide their skill once they’re deep into a game.
Billy soon started speaking in cartoonish voices and pleasantly trash-talking. “She doesn’t have nearly as much on my king as I have on hers,” he said.
As both players had less and less time remaining, the moves and clock hits became more frantic. The result was an upset: Billy wore Yu down on the clock, holding a worse position until her time ran out.
After watching the second game, the first could only be explained as a warm-up. Yu dominated the position, whittling Billy down until he didn’t even have the time advantage. “She’s destroying me this game,” he said.
By the time Billy resigned, he was down by one minute on the clock and multiple pawns on the board.
Billy was looking a little unsteady in the third game. He gave away a piece in the middle-game and loudly expressed his frustration. “I can’t believe I made that move,” he said.
Yu seized her advantage and pressed into Billy’s position. “The bones can be heard cracking, Billy,” one of the regulars said as he watched. “This isn’t just a victory, this is an annihilation,” another remarked.
All of a sudden, something bizarre happened. Yu looked at the board, reacted with confusion and moved two pieces in one turn. Billy was suddenly indignant and claimed that she had cheated. Yu confidently rebuked him. “Don’t try to play me like that,” she said. After setting up the board from memory, Yu proved the truth: it was Billy who had cheated and moved two pieces on the previous move. His sleight of hand is even easy to miss when watching a recording of the match.
Realizing that it’s hard to fool a master, Billy relented. “That’s what happened? Ok, then you win,” he said.
Onlookers commended the level of skill demonstrated in the three games. “This is beautiful chess. I’ve studied with some grandmasters, so I know when someone is a master,” someone said.
Billy accepted the hustle graciously and was financially compensated for his time. Two impressive chess players from different sides of the community produced an intense match, and the Independent thanks Billy and Jennifer Yu for being so accommodating and open to both conversation and competition.
Harry Cotter ’25 (harrycotter@college.harvard.edu) really wishes that he wasn’t terrible at chess.