MASTER JACOBSON
by Tim Krabbe

On the tram, Jacobson got a new idea for his Bottomless Pit. He would have preferred to get
off at the nearest stop and take another tram back home, to see on the board what his idea was
worth. But that was out of the question: he couldn't keep thirty children waiting for nothing.
For the rest of the ride, and during his walk to the school, Jacobson tried to visualize the
effects of his idea. He couldn't do it blind; the Bottomless Pit was too complicated. Perhaps, at
the school, before the games started, he could find a moment to set up the position. If some of
the players were watching, he would explain what he was trying to do. "It's not correct yet,"
he would say, "but this is the idea. Mate in nineteen. The mate itself is easy, but Black is going
to delay it. He can interpose a pawn, and this one too and one more; a knight, and this knight
too. Now a rook, and another one, the queen, and even the bishop: nine sacrifices, all on the
same square. And now, finally, White can mate, you see? Beautiful, isn't it? And on the tram,
on my way over here..." No, he would rather say: "On my walk over here." On the tram, he
could have been looking at a pocket chess set. What he really had to get across was that such
an idea could grab hold of you just as well when there was no chess board around.

He hadn't been there in thirty years, but those thirty years were erased when he stood in the
dark granite entrance hall and breathed its odor: Wilhelmus Lyceum. He could almost feel his
book bag under his arm.
The hall was like an echoing swimming pool. Students were running in all directions, some
with their faces painted as cats or mice, bumping into each other and into him without looking
where they were going.
No one seemed to have been assigned to meet him.
On a pillar, he noticed a hand-painted poster, announcing:

                              !!CELEBRATION!!
                     WILHELMUS ANNIVERSARY, OCTOBER 28
              3.00 PM IN THE CAFETERIA CHESS MATCH AGAINST
                        GRANDMASTER DANIEL JACOBSON
                             REGISTER BELOW
                     !! PLAY CHESS !! PLAY CHESS !!

 Eleven names were listed.
Jacobson stood waiting by the pillar. Nothing happened. The clock in the entrance hall
showed four minutes to three, one minute to three. It should have started at three. If nobody
showed up by then, he would go home, no excuses.
A boy, who was also a cat or a mouse, came running toward him.
"Are you grandmaster Jacobson?"
"Yes?"
"Jos is finishing up in the Ping-Pong room. He'll be right there."
Jos, that had to be Jos Webster, the former classmate who had invited him. Webster had
been a phenomenon, a chubby school clown with coke-bottle glasses whose speech was so
affected that he was once expelled from class just for that. At the same time he was one of the
best table tennis players in the Netherlands. Back then, he was already playing on the Dutch
national team, and for years to come Jacobson had continued to find his results in the
newspapers. Webster was not counting Peltz, of course the best-known sports figure
Wilhelmus had ever produced. It seemed strange that someone like that would ever have
busied himself with anything else but table tennis and being eccentric, but now he was a
classics teacher and the assistant principal of their old school.
There had been no room in the school's budget for an honorarium. Playing simuls for free
was against Jacobson's principles as a professional, but he had agreed to come: you had to
know when to set your principles aside. It was at Wilhelmus that he had become a chess
player; it was only fair for him to pass on some of his love and knowledge to a new
generation.
In light of this, eleven participants was disappointing.
"Isn't it great about Peltz?" said the painted boy.
Jacobson nodded.
"Is he going to be world champion?"
"Who knows."
"No, but seriously? What do you think?"
"Speculating is not very..." Jacobson started saying, but suddenly he felt irritated by the
righteousness of the answer he invariably gave anybody and everybody who wanted to talk
chess with him during the last few weeks.
He nodded. "Yes, he'll beat Neishtadt. Peltz is going to be world champion."
"You're kidding! Jesus! World champion! Wasn't it great, that last game? The Brisbane
Bombshell!"
"Will you be playing in the simul?" Jacobson asked.
"No way," said the boy, laughing in mock panic. "Chess is too hard for me."
Suddenly a little man with a red beard stood in front of Jacobson and kissed him on both
cheeks.
"Daantje Jacobson? Jesus, man, have you gotten ugly!"

Music was booming in the cafeteria. There was no indication of any chess simul, not a single
board upon which he might have set up his Bottomless Pit. He had expected to see a neat
rectangle of tables, with boards and pieces already set up, participants and spectators looking
forward to his arrival.
During his own school years Wilhelmus already had a more liberal reputation than other
schools, but what Jacobson was seeing now shocked him. A girl no older than fourteen was
stamping out her cigarette on the floor, which was littered with plastic cups, pieces and wads
of paper, cigarette butts; a fallen streamer was floating in a puddle of coke. The most
remarkable thing about a couple of bulging trashcans was that something had occasionally
been thrown into them. What a way to host someone they thought was a grandmaster. He
really should turn around and get out. This was hallowed ground Peltz had played chess
here; over there, by the window overlooking the courtyard, Jacobson had won his
unforgettable game against him.
Now, in the same spot, stood a table covered with little jars of makeup; a girl was painting
another girl's face. A sign read: BE A WILHELMOUSE TOO - 1 GUILDER.
So they were mice.
But where were the chess players?
Suddenly the music stopped, and in the midst of the resulting howls of protest Webster
came and stood next to Jacobson, and shouted: "Kids, kids, please be quiet for a moment!
Grandmaster Jacobson has arrived, the chess match is about to start. Who will help arrange the
tables? Will someone please go and get the boards and pieces?"
From the audience came whistles, and shouts of "We want disco!" No one came forward,
and Webster didn't look as if he had expected it either. "The chess club here died several years
ago," he said, with an apologetic laugh for Jacobson. "I hadn't told you?"
Webster started moving tables himself. Only one fragile-looking boy, his serious expression
untouched by the mouse-paint, helped him set up the rectangle. Jacobson almost lent a helping
hand himself. But there was a limit.
When Webster walked out of the cafeteria the mousy little fellow followed him; a moment
later they returned with the boards and pieces and proceeded to set them up.
And now Jacobson could really smell the old school. These were the very boards and
pieces they had used in his day. Among them was perhaps the same black queen that Peltz had
blundered in their historic game. Twelve-year-old against eighteen-year-old, don't miss it! And
Japie Peltz had not been your average twelve-year-old either; Jacobson was already letting him
play on the school team, second board, right behind himself. That little boy actually had a
chance to win the school championship; their game would be the deciding one. In those days
chess really meant something at Wilhelmus. At home, Jacobson had made signs, one saying
PELTZ 1C and the other JACOBSON 6b, which he had placed on the game table. At least
twenty spectators had shown up, and a couple of teachers too. Jacobson hadn't needed more
than a draw, but it was out of the question that he, a three-time school champion, someone
who already played for his club in the national team championship, would play for a draw
against a twelve-year-old, no matter how unquestionable his talent.
He could still see the Japie Peltz of that game: a little guy you could almost blow over,
uncapping and recapping his fountain pen at every move and giving off a slightly musty smell
from his father's pet shop.
He and Peltz had probably been the only ones who realized that "playing for a draw" was
always out of the question. Even with Black, Peltz had put him under pressure right from the
opening, and with matter-of-fact, powerful play obtained a winning position.
Then he had hung his queen. Jacobson had barely been able to suppress a sigh of relief, and
had immediately aligned himself with the prevailing view among the spectators: that the little
guy had put up a good fight, but that in the end something like this was bound to happen. Peltz
had resigned immediately and walked away, his eyes misty; Jacobson was school champion
for the fourth consecutive time. He had written a story for the school newspaper with the
headline JAAP PELTZ: A FUTURE CHESS MASTER? and proposed a blitz rematch. Peltz
had declined: his homework took precedence.
It remained the only game Jacobson had won against Peltz, but: he had also never lost
against him. During Peltz's early years, they had played a few more games against each other,
all draws. After that, Peltz had left him far behind, too far to be able to take revenge. There
was something mythical about it: the son who has become strong enough to defeat the father is
then forever separated from his father.
The score Jacobson - Peltz would be 1-0 forever.

In the end, twelve students and three teachers were seated behind the twenty-four chess boards.
Pretending to have succeeded in obtaining silence, Webster spoke a word of welcome.
"No anniversary of the school that has produced Jaap Peltz," he said, "should be without a
chess simul. Therefore I have invited the well-known chess correspondent of the Amsterdam
Tribune, the greatest chess player ever among my classmates, grandmaster Daniel Jacobson!"
The chess players clapped. Jacobson quickly explained the simul rules and began. Webster
himself played too.
After only a few moves it became clear that Wilhelmus was no longer any good. The spirit
of Peltz, or his own for that matter, no longer lived here. Even without music, the racket he
had to play in was unbearable. A simul against weak opponents was strictly a matter of
experience, but the lack of respect revealed by the noise upset Jacobson. He decided to keep in
his pocket the copy of his book "My Chess Board is Alive," which he had brought along to
give to the best player.
But he began to feel that it would be especially sad for himself if the simul were over in a
half hour, and without going so far as to play badly on purpose he tried to avoid situations in
which his opponents could blunder too easily.
Perhaps because he was giving that too much attention, he made a blunder himself, hanging
a piece against one of the teachers. It was just a Fingerfehler, a transposition of moves, the
type of blunder you made precisely because you were a strong player. But gone was gone.
The teacher was not to be fooled, and after winning all the other games, Jacobson resigned.
Webster, who amid general hilarity had been the first to be mated after only five minutes
and had thereupon abruptly disappeared, was suddenly back again. With an audience of only
Jacobson, the winning teacher, and the mousy little fellow who had helped with the boards, he
called Jacobson's score of 14-1 phenomenal, and handed him a bottle of whiskey.
"Now you have to play Ping-Pong with me," he said.

Jacobson found himself in the gym, standing behind a Ping-Pong table with a paddle in his
hand. On benches, all around, about a hundred students were waiting in relatively orderly
fashion.
"This is my ex-classmate, chess grandmaster Jacobson," Webster shouted. "He has just
won all the games in the simul." This was greeted by loud cheers and whistles; involuntarily,
Jacobson looked to see if the teacher who had won was there also.
"So we have to teach him a lesson. Shall I do it?"
"Yeah!" yelled the crowd.
"Five games, to eleven!" shouted Webster.
In the old days, Jacobson had sometimes watched Webster play for five guilders with a 19-
0 handicap. He had practically always won. And that was somebody whose 21-3 losses
against Chinese you could find in the papers!
Webster took a Ping-Pong paddle the size of a checkers man from his pocket, and served.
Automatically, Jacobson returned a few balls; a moment later, he had lost by 11-1. The fact
that Webster was playing with such a tiny paddle didn't seem to make any difference at all. In
the following games, Webster used a baseball bat, a badminton racket, and a gong. He won
everything. In the game with the gong, Jacobson had trouble keeping a straight face, but
Webster played with grim determination, and it was amazing what he was still capable of.
"And now," said Webster, "chess." He held up a chess board the audience roared.
"No no," Jacobson laughed. This really hurt his dignity. Would Peltz put up with
something like that? At least two kids were taking pictures; imagine such a picture ending up
in a chess magazine.
Webster laughed and served, holding the chess board by a corner.
He is letting me win, Jacobson thought when he found himself ahead by 10-8. A moment
later he had lost by 12-10.
"Mate!" shouted Webster.

He was already at the front door, never again to set foot in Wilhelmus. But a small boy
approached him.
"Mister Jacobson, may I ask you something?"
The boy hemmed and hawed, so shy he was barely intelligible.
"May I challenge you to a correspondence game?"
"No," said Jacobson.
In the boy's eyes there was such shocked disappointment, already mixed with resignation,
that Jacobson felt bad about his curt reaction. "I don't have enough time," he said. "People
often ask me; I am a professional chess player, but if I would agree to play every..."
"I see," said the boy. "I thought... My father said..."
Jacobson recognized him. It was the mousy little kid who had helped with the boards.
There he stood, his transparent face awe-struck and twitching as he confronted grandmaster
Jacobson.
"You were one of the players, weren't you?"
"Yes, sir. You won."
"Which game were you?"
"King's Indian. You got your knight to d5 and then I could hardly do anything anymore."
Jacobson remembered the game: it was the only one that had even resembled a chess game.
For a while, the kid had followed a well-known game by Peltz, developed his pieces neatly,
made no glaring mistakes, but then let himself be reeled in without a fight. He had resigned
appropriately, but surprisingly early for someone of his strength.
"I would always add a self-addressed envelope and a stamp. That way it won't cost you
anything."
That way it won't cost me anything! Jacobson bristled at the thought. The eternal naivet‚ of
the amateur who thought that you were already making enough if it didn't cost you anything!
"All right then," he said to his utter amazement.
"Really?" said the boy. An incredulous, joyful expression transformed the face.
"In that case, may I play with White? I'll send you my first move right away. Thank you
very much!"

At the tram stop, Jacobson realized that he had left his bottle of whiskey at the table tennis
scene. What a waste of an afternoon. How could he possibly have agreed to this
correspondence game? Because there had been a flash in which he had seen the boy as a
reincarnation of Japie Peltz, age twelve? Certainly not because of the talent.
But soon Jacobson remembered his idea for the Bottomless Pit, and his irritation dissolved.
He longed to be home, to set up the position, see if it worked, and so let as many hours pass as
he wanted.

It did not work, which didn't surprise Jacobson. With interruptions, he had already spent a
year on his Bottomless Pit. An idea for a beautiful chess problem would come to you in a
flash; a position that would show what you wanted could be set up in a quarter of an hour, but
it could take months to actually make such an idea work correctly. The pieces were stubborn
opponents. Certainly in the Bottomless Pit, which had to couple the brute force of a harvesting
machine with the precision of a ladies' watch.
There was a certain urgency. In five months entries had to be submitted for the World
Composition Tournament. If the Bottomless Pit was ready in time, and if it were to be
declared the winner in the more-mover section, then Jacobson would be in a way that he
would never take too seriously of course, but even so then he would be world champion.

When Jacobson, a few days after his Wilhelmus visit, received a letter addressed to IM
Jacobson, in which the writer said his name was Pepijn de Jong, his age twelve and his first
move e2-e4, he had completely forgotten about the correspondence game.
His first reaction was to propose a draw, and then, rejecting that as childish, to write that
pressure of work forced him to abandon the idea after all.
Even more than Peltz, he was a professional. Whoever wanted to avail himself of his chess
expertise had to pay for it. Articles, lectures, analyses, access to his archives, simuls, it all
came at a price. At one time he had determined a rate for correspondence games: fifteen
guilders a move.
Incidentally, Pepijn had kept his word. He had enclosed a self-addressed return envelope,
and a self-made notation sheet on which he had filled in, for White P. de Jong, for Black IM
D. Jacobson, and for the first move e2-e4. He had also added two drawings, one an original
and the other a copy, of a player sitting behind a chess board on which e2-e4 has been played
and from whose head emanated a balloon with the words: My move is... says IM Jacobson.
Coming from a twelve-year-old it was not altogether without talent.
Could he disappoint such a child? A small boy who had been the only one to help set up the
chess boards? Who had played over at least one of Peltz's games? Whose love of chess could
be crucially stimulated by a correspondence game against a real master?
And then that IM Jacobson. By using his real title, Pepijn touched on a sore point, but also
showed that he was no stranger to the world of chess. The ordinary public thought that
anybody who could think three moves ahead, or was able to play no fewer than twenty
children simultaneously, had to be a grandmaster. By the skin of his teeth Jacobson had
managed to earn the International Master title, but he was so consistently called grandmaster,
by the editors of his newspaper, simul organizers, and the general public, that he had given up
correcting everyone. Anyway, whoever called him grandmaster probably had something in
mind that was much inferior to the IM title he really possessed. "Grandmaster" had become a
household term, something like "genius," a word used to express awe in general. People had
no clue that it was an official title.
Only in that little boy was the flame of Wilhelmus chess still flickering!
Jacobson chose the Sicilian, the best opening for Black against 1.e2-e4 to defeat a weak
opponent quickly. He couldn't quite bring himself to filling in "c7-c5" on Pepijn's dots, and he
wrote his move on a postcard. Drawings and form he threw in the wastebasket.
He mailed his move that same day, and forgot about the correspondence game again.
END PART I

"The Brisbane Bombshell" may have been a vulgar sports slogan designed to allow a public
that didn't even know how the pieces moved to gloat over Peltz's successes but it was
definitely on target. Chess players themselves were talking about the Brisbane Bombshell, and
although Jacobson would never call it that in writing, at times the term would come to mind
when he happened to be thinking of Peltz's miracle move.
In Brisbane, Australia, not long before Jacobson's simul at Wilhelmus, Jaap Peltz, at forty-
two, had achieved the biggest success of his life by winning his match against Feoktistov and
becoming the challenger of world champion Neishtadt. It was a completely unexpected and
somewhat undeserved victory, but mostly what was still creating a buzz in the chess world
was the way Peltz had pulled it off.
With the score even, Peltz had won the last game, with Black no less, thanks to an
extremely bold pawn sacrifice in the early opening: 8...d5! precisely the move that White
had been playing to prevent. It was the Novelty of the Century; in the fifty years that this
position had occurred in games, no one, from club player to the world champion, had even
considered that d5 might be possible. It was as if Peltz had demonstrated that no parachute was
needed to jump out of an airplane.
Immediately after the sacrifice, Feoktistov could have forced a dead-drawn ending, but he
hadn't, perhaps because with White he thought that would have been too much honor for Peltz.
Instead, he had played to keep the pawn, and that had proven to be a mistake. Peltz had played
around that pawn as if it were an old chair he had paralyzed and humiliated Feoktistov, and
won the most beautiful and important game of his life.
Almost a month had passed since that game, and no one had discovered anything better for
White than the drawing line. That was puzzling: if Black, after eight natural moves by White,
could at least equalize in such a bold way, something was wrong with the game of chess.
Jacobson too had stared for hours at Peltz's pawn sacrifice, without finding a refutation. It
must have been the same for chess players the world over. No one had found anything yet; at
least no one had published anything.
Jacobson was wondering who actually had come up with this Brisbane Bombshell.
Imagination and daring were anything but characteristic of Peltz's game. It had to be Fajnman,
a Russian who had immigrated to the Netherlands and had been working for Peltz for years.
Though Fajnman had never won any tournaments, he was famous for his brilliant and bizarre
ideas. He looked the part, too: like the crazy scientist in a comic strip.
Peltz had done the right thing: Fajnman added something to his game that he lacked
himself: the artistic element.

At the press conference Peltz had given at Schiphol Airport upon his return, no one came away
any wiser. More than ever, Jacobson was struck by Peltz's air of insignificance. At the long
table, where he sat with Fajnman, his other seconds Loyd and Lindgren, and his business
manager Quinten de Jong, any outsider without hesitation would have pointed at Peltz as the
person who didn't belong. The chess players looked like chess players, Peltz like the mayor of
a small town. A reception on that scale was new to him, but he showed no trace of nerves or
excitement with superior humility the little bourgeois faced the roomful of reporters,
photographers, and television cameras, all the while greeting acquaintances with brief, stiff
nods. Jacobson got one too, but in that nod there was the special aloofness of their 1-0.
With his characteristic incapability of self-glorification, Peltz, his eyebrows raised in
perpetual mild surprise, described his victory over Feoktistov in terms of chance. What was
measured in a chess match wasn't who was the better player but who scored the most points;
in Brisbane, Feoktistov had certainly not played any worse than he had.
In various terms, Peltz was asked whether he was going to be world champion. In equally
varied terms, he said that he hoped so, that Neishtadt was stronger on paper, but that that was
no more than one indication of the possible outcome. Even if Neishtadt had four sides of the
die and he only two, it remained a die, and one of his sides could come up.
It was interesting that only the regular journalists asked questions while the chess journalists
kept quiet. Most of them were Peltz's personal acquaintances; of course every one of them
was hoping to get the exclusive story of the Brisbane Bombshell from him personally. Besides,
you didn't ask a grandmaster about his opening secrets, certainly not in public.
But suddenly a young journalist, not a chess player, asked the question that was on
everybody's lips.
"Mister Peltz, this Brisbane Bombshell, was it actually bluff?"
It was as if someone had asked the Queen her bra size. After a bewildered silence, the
entire audience burst out laughing, even Peltz. He leaned over toward Fajnman, evidently to
translate the question, because Fajnman also broke into a whinny. The interviewer himself
joined in the laughter, turning beet-red. It took at least a minute before it was quiet enough for
an answer.
"Bluffing is impossible in chess," said Peltz. "All the information is visible. You can't
pretend to have a possibility if you don't have it."
You could always count on Peltz for a sobering thought, but this was nonsense. Of course
you could bluff in chess; even he knew that. You could speculate that the opponent would not
use his information correctly; make him believe that you had possibilities you didn't really
have. And although it didn't fit Peltz's profile at all, Jacobson believed more and more
strongly that the Brisbane Bombshell had been precisely that: pure bluff.

It was as if a chess spirit had floated above the Wilhelmus Lyceum, knowing that a boy was
there who loved chess and had to be imbued with talent, and that spirit had blundered. It
simply didn't make sense: Japie Peltz of the pet shop a grandmaster, one step away from the
world championship and he, the son of writers, sitting there with a little notebook in his
hand, listening to what Japie had to say. It was Jacobson who was the chess player; the
moment was still with him when, seeing two boys playing chess, there had been an explosion
of certainty that he wanted that too, always, whatever it would turn out to be. And when the
existence of Peltz, so close to him, had made it clear early on that he had no talent then so be
it, no talent. There were books to write, archives to maintain, endgames to research, problems
to compose. A real chess player loved chess Peltz was Dr. Peltz, economist, author of a
series of widely used school books, married young and living in a suburb with his wife and
four ugly daughters; a man cut out for train passes and lunch boxes. No Bottomless Pits for
Peltz.
Even if Peltz could play chess ten times better than he, Jacobson was a thousand times more
the chess player.
 Composing chess problems had proved far more addictive even than playing games. The
name Bottomless Pit had come to Jacobson before he realized its double meaning: the great
Chess Piece Monster gobbled up all his time. Time streamed into his head and evaporated
there by the tankload. But no matter: this was the real chess, not White against Black, but the
artist against his medium, against both White and Black together. And even if people like Peltz
had no idea what you were doing, the beauty you were chasing after, and sometimes created,
held a truth that would survive all of his games.
Jacobson seldom played games anymore. Only Nardus stopped by from time to time to get
some columns out of his archive and to play blitz. He always brought snacks, but he refused to
look at the Bottomless Pit.
During those blitz games, it was almost with sorrow that Jacobson looked at his pieces. A
great master had once said that the chess pieces are alive with desires and feelings. In the
games of Neishtadt and Feoktistov, even in those of Peltz, in the Bottomless Pit, that was
indeed true, but in his games against Nardus they were washed out like old animals.
At times Jacobson thought, I play just well enough to see that I'm no good. I am the worst
chess player who ever loved chess this much.

Now and then Nardus hosted a kind of chess salon, afternoons when Peltz showed his latest
games to a group of chess acquaintances, most of them journalists. The tacit understanding
was that Peltz's views could be published: this was his way of propagating his own
commentary on his games. He himself never wrote about chess.
Sitting among Nardus, Jacobson, sometimes Fajnman, Quinten de Jong, Loyd and Lindgren
when they weren't out of the country, and a small number of other privileged insiders, there
was Peltz with his birdlike perch, his spry countenance, his decency, looking like a lost citizen
from the real world. He confirmed that impression by treating the suggestions of Quinten, who
was no more than your everyday amateur player, just as seriously as those of the attending
masters and grandmasters. Quinten also seemed out of place; a broadly built, cigar-smoking
individual most often dressed in a three-piece suit, bearing no trace at all of his early career as
a ballet dancer. These days he had a talent agency, and, attracted by the supposed mystique
that shrouded chess, had zoomed in on Peltz. Perhaps Peltz recognized in him a brother non-
chessplayer and looked to him for support, but Jacobson thought it was folly to let such a
character sit with the group.
Going over the Brisbane games, everyone held their breath at the last one, that of the Bomb.
Without blinking an eye, Peltz played beyond it, and at the seventeenth move said: "Is it OK
with you all if we start here?"
"Mister Peltz," said Nardus, "was that Bomb actually bluff?"
 Peltz gave a quick smile and said, "Bishop e2 doesn't work here, Black takes on f2."
On his walk home after such afternoons, Jacobson felt dizzy at the thought of that little
guy's speed and lucidity. None of the insights were in themselves beyond him, but the self-
evidence with which Peltz would distill a plan or a move out of all those divergent
implications of a position boggled the mind. He didn't calculate, he knew; chess was his
mother tongue.
But he wasn't going to be world champion. In light of chess history, Peltz was no more
than an amusing late bloomer whose qualification for a world championship match was more
than he deserved. Neishtadt was much too strong for him.
During one of those sessions, when it came up that Jacobson and Peltz had gone to school
together, Jacobson mentioned their old game and their 1-0 score. He noticed a slight irritation
in Peltz that passed immediately, and realized he had committed an indiscretion by mentioning
the old score that could never be settled now.
The reprimand had followed immediately. To Jacobson's astonishment, Peltz promptly
showed the old game at dictation speed. Jacobson seemed to be seeing it for the first time;
with Peltz moving the pieces, and masters and grandmasters for an audience, he was struck by
the crookedness, the stupidity, the horrible talentlessness of his own play; especially compared
to the 12-year-old Peltz's crystal-clear effectiveness.
Nardus had asked if he could publish the game, and, after a quick glance at Jacobson, Peltz
had shaken his head and said, "That remains our game, doesn't it, Daan?"
Jacobson stood in such awe of Peltz the chess player that it took days before it dawned on
him what it meant that Peltz had been able to show that game on command. A grandmaster of
his caliber knew thousands of games by heart, but most likely not a thirty-year-old school
championship game. He must have gone over that game often he was one step away from
the world title but still couldn't bear having blown that school championship.
Oh, Jacobson would have gladly remained eighteen forever so Peltz would be always
twelve: a small boy in tears who had found out that you couldn't overthrow the established
order just like that.

Every time Pepijn sent a move, Jacobson remembered the correspondence game again. He
received an address change from someone whose profession was "pawn" and who announced
his move from d2 to d4; a watercolor representing the display window of a toy shop, inside
which, if you looked closely, you could see a miniature chess board showing the new position;
a series of Polaroid photos on which Pepijn lugged a pawn across a giant chess board in a
park. In a package delivered in his absence, which Jacobson had to pick up at the post office,
was a real chess knight, its head fitted onto the base with a piece of paper on which he found,
not until several minutes later, the words: "I'm going from d4 to b5 all in one piece."
Without a doubt Pepijn was a nice, sensitive boy who thought he was pleasing Jabobson
with those surprise gifts. But they irritated him. He had agreed to a game of chess, not asked
to peek into a child's soul.
Early December, toward Saint Nicholas day, Jacobson received a marzipan chess board
with an arrow pointing from b5 to a3. "May this put you in a marzipensive mood," wrote
Pepijn.
Jacobson immediately ate the board.
The game itself also irritated him. After a few moves it had dawned on him stupid klutz
that he was that he shouldn't have played the Sicilian. Instead, it would have been better to
leave theory as quickly as possible. Now it was too late. A correspondence game was no
ordinary game; Pepijn could choose the sharpest systems and look them up in books. For the
time being an old newspaper would suffice, for Pepijn was boldly following the path that led
to the Brisbane Bombshell. And now, after the marzipan move, Jacobson had to decide
whether, just like Peltz against Feoktistov, he would dare to play 8...d5.
That was remarkable indeed.
It was out of the question that Pepijn was repeating the moves of the world's most talked-
about game by accident. True, he was following the loser, but if Jacobson now played the
Bomb, how would he respond if Pepijn chose the drawing line that Feoktistov had spurned?
Simple: that variation was a draw between grandmasters; with his superior technique, and
playing against a schoolboy, Jacobson would have no trouble winning precisely such an even
endgame.
He had to laugh at himself: what a chess player he was. Here he was worrying about
winning a game he hadn't wanted to play in the first place! If Pepijn chose the drawing line he
could have his draw. Jacobson would send him a copy of his own column from the
Amsterdam Tribune with that variation, and a draw offer. Then the boy would have to be
really impertinent to want to continue.
Anyhow, he couldn't let a schoolboy call his bluff, and he played the Bomb. There was
some pleasure in the realization that, as the opponent of someone in whom he had momentarily
seen a reincarnation of Peltz, he put himself in Peltz's shoes.

Now Jacobson was looking forward to Pepijn's next move. But a week went by and it hadn't
come. And after ten days it still wasn't there. And that in spite of the fact that it was a forced
move; any novelties wouldn't occur till later in the game.
Was Pepijn no longer looking forward to the next move? Jacobson still could see the joy in
the mouse-face when he had agreed to the correspondence game. Suddenly he had the feeling
that Pepijn had taken this much time between moves all along. He took out his calendar to
check. The simul at Wilhelmus had been on October 28. It was now December 15 a month
and a half for seven opening moves! Every one of which had been in the paper.
Good grief.
He himself had always mailed his move on the next day at the latest; Pepijn had done all the
dawdling. Why? Did it have something to do with the fact that Pepijn had no address but only
a post office box number? Was there some reason it took a long time for him to receive
Jacobson's moves?
Or was Jacobson falling into the trap that threatened every master who agreed to play a
correspondence game against an amateur? The thought had been with him all along.
Frequently, the amateur had assistance, strong assistance. Before you knew it, you were
playing against an entire club. At that point you had on the one hand a master who really didn't
feel like playing the game, and on the other some good amateurs who did nothing but analyze
the position. Jacobson wouldn't be the first to lose such a game; world champions had gone
before him.
Was Pepijn making him play against the Wilhelmus chess club? Webster had said that there
was no more chess club at the school. Against a regular chess club? Was Pepijn getting advice
from a strong chess player he knew? By mail perhaps, which could be why it took so long?
And what did the Brisbane Bombshell have to do with this was Pepijn connected with chess
players who knew a refutation and was that why he was following Feoktistov?
But whatever the reason, a twelve-year-old boy who was allowed to play a correspondence
game against a real master was definitely expected to show some enthusiasm for that game.
Jacobson took a postcard and wrote: De Jong - Jacobson: 0-1 (overstepped time).
He cut the unused stamp off the self-addressed envelope, threw away all Pepijn's drawings
and forms that he still had, and mailed his postcard.
He forgot about the correspondence game.

Peltz was a candidate for Sportsman of the Year. Enjoying the prospect of feeling embarrassed
when watching as prosaic a man as Peltz appearing at something as pseudo-festive as the
Sportsman of the Year show, Jacobson turned his TV on. But Peltz didn't come; he was absent
due to "personal circumstances." He was chosen just the same, and now the show host
announced the scoop that Peltz was to have contributed: the city of Amsterdam was a
candidate for the organization of the Neishtadt-Peltz world chess championship match.
END PART II