I wasn’t even trying to win.
That’s the part I keep replaying in my head. It was a Tuesday. I’d had a full-on disaster of a morning—Mum yelling about bills, Dad slamming the bathroom door so hard the mirror cracked again, and school being school (i.e., a soul-crushing carousel of noise and PE kits that never fully dry). By the time I made it to the café, I was carrying about seven different emotional breakdowns, and none of them were about chess.
Don Emilio was already set up. Black pieces, of course. He always takes black like it’s some kind of dare. He glanced up and said nothing, which was his usual greeting. I sat. We started. Standard stuff.
I opened e4. He mirrored. I developed. He countered.
Somewhere around move 16, I noticed something odd: he was… distracted? Not sloppy, but looser. Less brutal. Like he wasn’t looking to punish me, just play. And weirdly, I was focused. More than usual. My thoughts weren’t getting drowned out by arguments or school or whatever existential nonsense had been looping in my head. Just… moves. Patterns. Possibilities.
Move 22. He castled late. Too late.
I saw it. A small crack. A bishop sacrifice that would leave his king exposed if he took the bait. I hovered over the piece. I didn’t want to play it. I shouldn’thave played it. It was risky, borderline arrogant. But something in me whispered: go on.
So I did.
Three moves later, his position collapsed. A knight fork, an open file, a king with nowhere to hide. He stared at the board for a long time. Then he looked at me—really looked—and gave this tiny, reluctant nod.
“Mate in three,” he muttered.
I didn’t say anything. Just played it out. Quietly. Clinically. Then, when the checkmate landed, I looked up and saw it—something in his face. Not disappointment. Not even surprise.
Pride.
I left the café in a daze. Walked two blocks. Then threw up behind a recycling bin. Nerves. Adrenaline. Or maybe my stomach just couldn’t handle victory.
When I got home, I loaded up chessgames.com—where I sometimes replay grandmaster matches and pretend I understand half of what they’re doing. I searched for the exact trap I’d sprung. Turns out, it was almost identical to a game played in the 1970s between two Soviet players with terrifying cheekbones. One of them resigned on move 29. I checkmated on 28.
I clicked through the game three times. My sacrifice wasn’t lucky. It was real. It was good.
The next day, Don Emilio said nothing about the loss. Not even a snide remark. We just played. He destroyed me again. Order restored. But at one point, after I blundered a rook like a complete amateur, he gave this half-smile and muttered, “You play worse now. Winning has softened your brain.”
He’s not wrong.
I still don’t know what that win meant. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But I saved the notation. I printed it. I folded it into my wallet like some sacred scroll. Just in case I ever forget that, on one random Tuesday in Valencia, I did something right.
One game. One moment. One checkmate against the man who taught me how to think.
And yes, I still threw up.
—Leo