What do you think?
Rate this book
The Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, and the World's Oldest Game
In the tradition of The Professor and the Madman , Longitude , and The Orchid Thief , Hallman transforms an obsessive quest for obscure things into a compulsively readable and entertaining weaving of travelogue, journalism, and chess history.
In the tiny Russian province of Kalmykia, obsession with chess has reached new heights. Its leader, a charismatic and eccentric millionaire/ex--car salesman named Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is a former chess prodigy and the most recent president of FIDE, the world's controlling chess body. Despite credible allegations of his involvement in drug running, embezzlement, and murder, the impoverished Kalmykian people have rallied around their leader's obsession---chess is played on Kalmykian prime-time television and is compulsory in Kalmykian schools. In addition, Kalmyk women have been known to alter their traditional costumes of pillbox hats and satin gowns to include chessboard-patterned sashes.
The Chess Artist is both an intellectual journey and first-rate travel writing dedicated to the love of chess and all of its related oddities, writer and chess enthusiast J. C. Hallman explores the obsessive hold chess exerts on its followers by examining the history and evolution of the game and the people who dedicate their lives to it. Together with his friend Glenn Umstead, an African-American chessmaster who is arguably as chess obsessed as Ilyumzhinov, Hallman tours New York City's legendary chess district, crashes a Princeton Math Department game party, challenges a convicted murderer to a chess match in prison, and travels to Kalmykia, where they are confronted with members of the Russian intelligence service, beautiful translators who may be spies, seven-year-old chess prodigies, and the sad blight of a land struggling toward capitalism.
In the tiny Russian province of Kalmykia, obsession with chess has reached new heights. Its leader, a charismatic and eccentric millionaire/ex--car salesman named Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is a former chess prodigy and the most recent president of FIDE, the world's controlling chess body. Despite credible allegations of his involvement in drug running, embezzlement, and murder, the impoverished Kalmykian people have rallied around their leader's obsession---chess is played on Kalmykian prime-time television and is compulsory in Kalmykian schools. In addition, Kalmyk women have been known to alter their traditional costumes of pillbox hats and satin gowns to include chessboard-patterned sashes.
The Chess Artist is both an intellectual journey and first-rate travel writing dedicated to the love of chess and all of its related oddities, writer and chess enthusiast J. C. Hallman explores the obsessive hold chess exerts on its followers by examining the history and evolution of the game and the people who dedicate their lives to it. Together with his friend Glenn Umstead, an African-American chessmaster who is arguably as chess obsessed as Ilyumzhinov, Hallman tours New York City's legendary chess district, crashes a Princeton Math Department game party, challenges a convicted murderer to a chess match in prison, and travels to Kalmykia, where they are confronted with members of the Russian intelligence service, beautiful translators who may be spies, seven-year-old chess prodigies, and the sad blight of a land struggling toward capitalism.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
13 people are currently reading
275 people want to read
About the author
J.C. Hallman
11 books70 followersI'm the author of seven books, most recently SAY ANARCHA: A Young Woman, a Devious Surgeon, and the Harrowing Birth of Modern Women's Health.
I enjoy talking to readers, for book clubs and 1:1s. Find me at https://www.skolay.com/writers/jc-hal...
I enjoy talking to readers, for book clubs and 1:1s. Find me at https://www.skolay.com/writers/jc-hal...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 24, 2017
As much a travel book as a chess book. Some of the chapters were weak and you tended to wonder what was the point of them. But the chapters that covered the NY chess clubs, a visit to Princeton University, and a major chess tournament were good and insightful.
September 28, 2007
It was an entrancing book. I play a little chess, like, know how the pieces move, but this book was so engrossing that I signed up on the IRC chess club, and promptly got my patoot kicked by people from all over the world. It's a history of an obsession, a contagious obsession.
TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel
(Which has nothing to do with chess.)
TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel
(Which has nothing to do with chess.)
November 4, 2017
One of my favorite books of the year. Excellent writing, great story and very interesting subject.
February 27, 2010
This book has all a chess player would want: chess lore, quotes, personalities, history and travel to places of interest to chess players. There are even three annotated games, two of them are part of the main story and played by Glenn, one of the two principal protagonists.
It was at a casino in Atlantic City where the author J.C. Hallman, who worked there as a casino dealer, met Glenn Umstead, a USCF-rated 2173 chess player whose rating at the Internet Chess Club once reached as high as 2561. Glenn is an African-American who had the ambition to become the first black chess grandmaster, only to see his hopes dashed to the ground when Maurice Ashley (a black American) beat him into it.
Glenn is a prototype of a real chess nut. He lives and breathes chess. He plays whenever and wherever there is opportunity to play. He becomes morose and lethargic if deprived of chess for two or more days. He had been once married and has a child, but the marriage lasted for only a few months. His relationships with past girlfriends also did not last long, some of them complaining he plays too much chess. At 28 years old, he has never owned a car. He would play chess in the internet up to the wee hours of the morning and sleep during his commute to work. He works as a card dealer at the casino to earn a living but all the rest is basically chess already.
When Hallman invited Glenn to a chess adventure, Glenn wasted no time in accepting. Their travel took them to Moscow and to St. Petersburg in Russia where they visited chess clubs (which were "like brothels" according to Hallman) and where Glenn played 3-minute blitz games (with $2 bet per game) against the legendary Chepukaitis, 5-time blitz champion of St. Petersburg, and who once played blitz with the teenage Bobby Fischer and beat the latter ten games in a row. Glenn lost horribly to Chepukaitis, 9 1/2 to 1 1/2.
They also flew to, and spent several weeks in, Elista. This is the capital city of the former Soviet republic of Kalmykia, where its crazed President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov built a Chess City amidst the squalor and poverty of the country. Hallman wrangled an interview with Kirsan and the latter, who at that time was also the President of the FIDE (the world governing body for chess), minced no words in saying that one of his goals is to make chess the religion for his country. He considered the equally-psychotic American champion Bobby Fischer a god.
Cockily strutting about as a chess master from America, Glenn had a rude awakening when two 7-year-old chess playing Kalmyk boys beat him. As they say, Filipinos are now everywhere. And guess whom Glenn and Hallman meet while in Kalmykia? Mr. Casto Abundo, a well-known chess personality in the Philippines, described by Hallman as "a chubby Filipino" who was then in charge of FIDE's Elista branch. Abundo had a private cottage right there at the Chess City and some scenes in the book showed him watering plants in his garden and doing household chores.
Hallman was an excellent writer, very observant and he did exceptional research. Apart from the duo's adventures and misadventures, the whole history of chess is in this book: not only chess in general, but also those of EACH of the chess pieces in particular, given in-between the main narrative.
The two also visited the Marshall Chess Club and the Manhattan Chess Club with Glenn playing and Hallman observing and taking notes. With Hallman's detailed prose, the reader could nearly feel for himself the ambience in the tournament halls, have a close-up look at the quirkiness of some of the game's well-known players, and the tension felt by the players, as Glenn played at the new York Open and the World Open. To test some theories, Hallman also took Glenn to the cafeteria of the Mathematics Department of the Princeton University (birthplace of the Games Theory) to play chess, and to an American prison where Glenn played simuls with convicts and met a strong correspondence chess player named Bloodgood who was serving a life sentence for killing his own mother.
Despite this excellent product of his labor, towards the end of the book Hallman expressed his disenchantment with chess. He wrote that in learning the game's history he:
"had come to realize that a game with the potential to reconcile art and science instead frequently served as a fulcrum for ugliness. The failure of chess to popularize itself was one of the few things all chess players seemed to agree on. 'Chess should be on a higher level than any other sport,' GM Yasser Seirawan said. 'The fact that it's on such a low scale is a collective failure.' As long as chess has existed, great thinkers have found it distasteful. 'I hate and avoid it, because it is not play enough,' said Montaigne. 'The struggle for power and the competitive spirit expressed in the from of an ingenious game (has) always been repugnant to me,' said Einstein. The list of actual players who have abandoned the game or come to dislike it while continuing in the profession is long and full of talent."
Hallman also implied that he sees Glenn's future as a chess player as rather bleak--
"The worldwide structure of tournament play, the entire existence of FIDE and Ilyumzhinov and other chess organizations, it was all designed for one thing--to create a patriarchal pseudogovernment whose only purpose was to perpetuate itself. Chess was like an aircraft carrier forever at sea,, at war with the world and always on the brink of mutiny. Even its first world champion had suggested the world might be better off without it. It was virtually impossible for a player of Glenn's caliber to feel as though he had accomplished anything. As a black man, Glenn had achieved what only a few dozen black men had done before him, ever, and though chess was his identity wholesale he was forced to think of it as a glorified hobby."
But whatever. That took nothing away from my enjoyment of the book, for if reading is my wife then chess is my mistress. This book was well-written, informative and fun, fun, fun. A strong five-star book in my growing library, hardbound, and only P165.00 at Booksale SM Megamall. Viva Booksale!
It was at a casino in Atlantic City where the author J.C. Hallman, who worked there as a casino dealer, met Glenn Umstead, a USCF-rated 2173 chess player whose rating at the Internet Chess Club once reached as high as 2561. Glenn is an African-American who had the ambition to become the first black chess grandmaster, only to see his hopes dashed to the ground when Maurice Ashley (a black American) beat him into it.
Glenn is a prototype of a real chess nut. He lives and breathes chess. He plays whenever and wherever there is opportunity to play. He becomes morose and lethargic if deprived of chess for two or more days. He had been once married and has a child, but the marriage lasted for only a few months. His relationships with past girlfriends also did not last long, some of them complaining he plays too much chess. At 28 years old, he has never owned a car. He would play chess in the internet up to the wee hours of the morning and sleep during his commute to work. He works as a card dealer at the casino to earn a living but all the rest is basically chess already.
When Hallman invited Glenn to a chess adventure, Glenn wasted no time in accepting. Their travel took them to Moscow and to St. Petersburg in Russia where they visited chess clubs (which were "like brothels" according to Hallman) and where Glenn played 3-minute blitz games (with $2 bet per game) against the legendary Chepukaitis, 5-time blitz champion of St. Petersburg, and who once played blitz with the teenage Bobby Fischer and beat the latter ten games in a row. Glenn lost horribly to Chepukaitis, 9 1/2 to 1 1/2.
They also flew to, and spent several weeks in, Elista. This is the capital city of the former Soviet republic of Kalmykia, where its crazed President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov built a Chess City amidst the squalor and poverty of the country. Hallman wrangled an interview with Kirsan and the latter, who at that time was also the President of the FIDE (the world governing body for chess), minced no words in saying that one of his goals is to make chess the religion for his country. He considered the equally-psychotic American champion Bobby Fischer a god.
Cockily strutting about as a chess master from America, Glenn had a rude awakening when two 7-year-old chess playing Kalmyk boys beat him. As they say, Filipinos are now everywhere. And guess whom Glenn and Hallman meet while in Kalmykia? Mr. Casto Abundo, a well-known chess personality in the Philippines, described by Hallman as "a chubby Filipino" who was then in charge of FIDE's Elista branch. Abundo had a private cottage right there at the Chess City and some scenes in the book showed him watering plants in his garden and doing household chores.
Hallman was an excellent writer, very observant and he did exceptional research. Apart from the duo's adventures and misadventures, the whole history of chess is in this book: not only chess in general, but also those of EACH of the chess pieces in particular, given in-between the main narrative.
The two also visited the Marshall Chess Club and the Manhattan Chess Club with Glenn playing and Hallman observing and taking notes. With Hallman's detailed prose, the reader could nearly feel for himself the ambience in the tournament halls, have a close-up look at the quirkiness of some of the game's well-known players, and the tension felt by the players, as Glenn played at the new York Open and the World Open. To test some theories, Hallman also took Glenn to the cafeteria of the Mathematics Department of the Princeton University (birthplace of the Games Theory) to play chess, and to an American prison where Glenn played simuls with convicts and met a strong correspondence chess player named Bloodgood who was serving a life sentence for killing his own mother.
Despite this excellent product of his labor, towards the end of the book Hallman expressed his disenchantment with chess. He wrote that in learning the game's history he:
"had come to realize that a game with the potential to reconcile art and science instead frequently served as a fulcrum for ugliness. The failure of chess to popularize itself was one of the few things all chess players seemed to agree on. 'Chess should be on a higher level than any other sport,' GM Yasser Seirawan said. 'The fact that it's on such a low scale is a collective failure.' As long as chess has existed, great thinkers have found it distasteful. 'I hate and avoid it, because it is not play enough,' said Montaigne. 'The struggle for power and the competitive spirit expressed in the from of an ingenious game (has) always been repugnant to me,' said Einstein. The list of actual players who have abandoned the game or come to dislike it while continuing in the profession is long and full of talent."
Hallman also implied that he sees Glenn's future as a chess player as rather bleak--
"The worldwide structure of tournament play, the entire existence of FIDE and Ilyumzhinov and other chess organizations, it was all designed for one thing--to create a patriarchal pseudogovernment whose only purpose was to perpetuate itself. Chess was like an aircraft carrier forever at sea,, at war with the world and always on the brink of mutiny. Even its first world champion had suggested the world might be better off without it. It was virtually impossible for a player of Glenn's caliber to feel as though he had accomplished anything. As a black man, Glenn had achieved what only a few dozen black men had done before him, ever, and though chess was his identity wholesale he was forced to think of it as a glorified hobby."
But whatever. That took nothing away from my enjoyment of the book, for if reading is my wife then chess is my mistress. This book was well-written, informative and fun, fun, fun. A strong five-star book in my growing library, hardbound, and only P165.00 at Booksale SM Megamall. Viva Booksale!
September 18, 2017
Great insight into the world of chess, particularly as relates to its roots and popularity in Kalmykia, Russia. How fascinating to know of a place called Chess City.
As someone who has been an avid player for some 20 years, this was my first read of the sort. The clinical and psychological drawbacks to playing the game are good to be aware of. While I have researched and even seen a film on Bobby Fischer, I can see how one could lose balance with reality, which was the primary influence for picking up the book. Being aware that such adverse mental conditions can evolve is the first step to avoiding them. Like most things in life, nothing is perfect, but with chess the positives definitely outweigh the negatives.
As someone who has been an avid player for some 20 years, this was my first read of the sort. The clinical and psychological drawbacks to playing the game are good to be aware of. While I have researched and even seen a film on Bobby Fischer, I can see how one could lose balance with reality, which was the primary influence for picking up the book. Being aware that such adverse mental conditions can evolve is the first step to avoiding them. Like most things in life, nothing is perfect, but with chess the positives definitely outweigh the negatives.
May 3, 2021
As chess stories go, I found this to be very good. It held my interest throughout. The main topic is about a trip to the country of Kalmykia, a Russian satellite. The leader of the country is trying to make chess the dominant industry of his small country. The bonus topic is an insight into the mind and personality of the author's friend and companion, a grand master wannabe. Success in chess often has tradeoffs in other facets of life, as the author so elegantly demonstrates.
October 16, 2022
Interesting enough, but the writer's style wasn't my favorite and the author can come off as judging and self righteous at times. I did enjoy the "Develop Your Pieces" chapters explaining the history behind each chess piece.
October 26, 2010
Like a recurring virus - along comes a winter and I return to a shelved mission to improve my chess. This time I recently got beaten by a young un and I decided to re-read Bobby Fishcer's book on how to get better and then I spotted this book in the Library beside all the other chess books.
Hallman gives us a book which is a bit about the history of the game, the atmosphere of tournaments and opens with his friend and a chess master who happens to work the tables in Atlantic city casinos with him, Glenn. They also go to the home state of FIDE president - Kirsan Ilyumzhinov - who is also the head of the Republic of Kalymykia, part of the Russian Federation. A bizzare adventure which exposes the surreality of a poor state which has a chess city - whilst it gets eaten into a growing desert.
Also with power - there comes the stories of how dissident voices get dealt with.
I think - I enjoy reading about chess far more than I take my beatings in the glow of my computer opponent.
Hallman gives us a book which is a bit about the history of the game, the atmosphere of tournaments and opens with his friend and a chess master who happens to work the tables in Atlantic city casinos with him, Glenn. They also go to the home state of FIDE president - Kirsan Ilyumzhinov - who is also the head of the Republic of Kalymykia, part of the Russian Federation. A bizzare adventure which exposes the surreality of a poor state which has a chess city - whilst it gets eaten into a growing desert.
Also with power - there comes the stories of how dissident voices get dealt with.
I think - I enjoy reading about chess far more than I take my beatings in the glow of my computer opponent.
September 16, 2015
The chess information was interesting but I struggled with Hallman's elaborate metaphors and descriptions at times, (e.g. 'Crows barked'; and of his friend's whistling, 'Then he sucked in his ammunition and shaped his lips to a pucker as if for a kiss, just a tiny hole in the center of his embouchure like the pupil of a fat, fleshy eye, and when the first note sounded from between his lips, it was effortless and took just right to the architecture of the buildings around the square so that it seemed perfectly supplied by an electronic amplifier at some distance from us.') This all becomes a bit wearing after a while. Hopefully, future editions will correct glaring editorial blunders (e.g. 'an English journalist named Frederick edge', 'the Bearing Strait'), and tone down the over-abundance of colons that pepper many sentences and are used inconsistently. The list of source material and chapter epigrams are helpful and show Hallman's depth of research but I would have preferred a more consistent factual approach rather than a hybrid of literary styles.
December 31, 2013
The Chess Artist is a surprising book as you move through it's fractured narrative. It's part history, part memoir of Hallman's desire to reveal in chess culture, part character study of his casino co-worker and Chess Master friend Glenn, and part travel narrative of their journey to and through the small chess-obsessed Russian republic of Kalmykia. It's a beautifully written and fascinating book, even when the balancing act between topics doesn't lend itself to the level of depth you might expect if The Chess Artist was strictly a memoir or a history of chess. The moments of frustration when you crave more on the migration of chess from Asia into Europe are eclipsed by the surprising turns the book takes with regularity. If you're searching for an in-depth history of chess or a manual to develop your pieces, you won't find that here, but you'll probably enjoy it nonetheless.
August 23, 2012
An interesting book on chess and the world around it. Obsession is an apt description of many of the people that are associated with the game, and the book displays this tendency amongst many of its characaters. The background on the FIDE president was both insightful and disturbing. As a chess aficionado, I enjoy reading about the game and its many quirky players and found the book to be entertaining.
July 22, 2013
Dull and meandering, this book made me hate chess. The middle section with the author traveling in Russia was interminably long and the murder conspiracy he tried to dig into left the reader with no answers. The best part was when he came back to America and recounted playing chess in a prison, but it took me months to work up the stomach to power through the book and finally finish it to get to that point.
August 28, 2007
This was probably worth 2 and a half stars, but that wasn't possible. It started off with promise, but an uneven structure and tone, along with too many self-consciously literary efforts by the author made it tough to finish. I probably wouldn't recommend this unless you are starved for books to read about chess.
September 25, 2009
Very interesting insights into the crazy world of chess. Our author makes his way to Kalmakyia, the self-proclaimed chess center of the world and home to an egomanical chess-playing, chess promoting dictator, and tells us that chess genius is not far from madness. Nothing new on the crazy gamers front, but well-written and entertaining.
August 29, 2013
Really everything you could want in a fun and entertaining book on Chess. If you aren't familiar with chess then this isn't for you. I did not want to put it down and I learned a lot about chess and Russia. Will be keeping this in my personal library which is the highest honor I could bestow on a book.
August 11, 2015
This was a good read. It was not great but it also did not fall into many of the pitfalls when a writer injects him or herself into a novel. The political story about the Russian republic was a bit of a distraction and could have been dispensed with but he did a nice job of looking at the development of chess and its modern state.
December 23, 2008
Really more of a dilettante indulgence than a history of chess, as it is sometimes billed. Not well-written or structured-- feels like it might never have undergone revision. The survey of the oddball world of modern chess is interesting, however.
April 10, 2012
Read around 2006. Best non-fiction on the world of chess (not much competition).
Many great descriptions: Alexander Ivanov!
But you can tell the author is a rube because he cheats with a computer. He doesn't have a deep and personal sense of the game.
Many great descriptions: Alexander Ivanov!
But you can tell the author is a rube because he cheats with a computer. He doesn't have a deep and personal sense of the game.
August 25, 2008
While not an avid player (though he does fancy bullet on the ICC), Hallman is intrigued enough by the game and sufficiently knowledgable about its history to write a very engaging chess travelog.
June 15, 2012
I struggled to get through a lot of it. The travel angle is fine and well-written enough, but it wasn't for me. The chess content is thin but interesting. I wish there had been a lot more chess.
December 25, 2013
Author's writing style made a good story a tedious read at times.
February 3, 2015
soon will give my critic ..
April 7, 2015
Needed better editing. 'Protagonists' weren't always compelling.Liked it when it was giving me interesting Chess information.
December 12, 2007
Fantastic book
October 23, 2010
Narrated as a travel journal it is decent book which covers many theories on the history of chess.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews