‘All the Wrong Moves,’ a memoir about chess, and more | Book review
Sasha Chapin is bipolar, suffers from aphantasia, does drugs, and has an uncontrollable addiction — to chess.
All the Wrong Moves
By Sasha Chapin
Doubleday. 217 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Dennis J. McGrath
Sasha Chapin is bipolar, suffers from aphantasia, does drugs and has an uncontrollable addiction. In other words, he’s more interesting than you and therefore secured a contract to write a memoir.
In Chapin’s case, his addiction is chess, which drives him to pass up sex, skip meals, and pretty much blow off work. Hence the title, All The Wrong Moves: A memoir about chess, love, and ruining everything.
Chapin takes pains to portray himself in an unflattering light. Then he doubles down by populating his memoir with a drug-using stripper girlfriend, a disgustingly foulmouthed online opponent, and other misfits and oddballs.
The premise of the book is that his dormant fondness for chess is suddenly revived when he plays a game against a chess hustler on a street in Kathmandu. His chess devotion instantly rages out of control. He sinks into marathon sessions of online play. He turns down a booty call from a Tinder date, lives on junk food and otherwise withdraws from normal life into the depths of the game.
In the end, he achieves his goal of playing astonishingly well at a big tournament in Los Angeles, despite his mediocre rating and the handicap of aphantasia — the inability to conjure up mental images in his mind, which is a decided disadvantage for a chess player.
And after the last round, he simply walks away from chess, apparently with no withdrawal symptoms. There, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?
From the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.