The first part of my life — If it could even be called a life — will be remembered by no one.
Not because it was short, but because it was empty. I was nothing. Stripped of form,
meaning, will. Nameless in the eyes of the world. Soulless in my own.
While others laughed, built friendships, and found themselves — I existed in the shadows,
like a ghost without a voice.
At school, I was cast out before I even had a chance to enter. It wasn't just fists that pushed
me away — I was ignored, belittled, erased. I was an outsider. Too strange. Too real for a
system built on falsehood.
Teachers... instead of becoming bridges, they became walls. In their eyes, I saw the same
thing I saw in my peers — coldness. I wasn't even worth the effort of understanding. No hands reached out— only labels.
By eighteen, I left my parents' home. Not because I had grown — but because I couldn't
endure it anymore. There were no roots in me. No attachments. The ties were severed before they had a chance to form. I didn't feel pain — felt a void so deep that pain would've been a blessing.
I wandered through my own mind like a scorched desert. Without direction. Without future. Without belief in my own existence. I was a shadow — even my own flesh had turned away from me.
My parents... they wanted me to be their reflection. They offered me dreams I had never asked for. Their commands echoed like voices from a life I was never meant to live.
I refused to obey — but I didn't know how to rebel. We argued. We screamed. But never
truly heard each other. To them, I was a failed project. To me, they were executioners hiding
behind the mask of care.
And so my childhood passed — a silent scream.
Inside — frozen solitude. Outside — a mask of indifference.
And with each passing day, one question grew louder:
If I am a flaw in the system, why did it create me? If the world rejects me, why did it give me
consciousness?
Or perhaps... I was meant to rewrite the rules.
I kept dragging the wreckage of my life behind me, never even trying to piece it back together.
By the age of twenty-two, I was no one. Unemployed. Expelled from university for failing grades. Lost — in the eyes of society, and in my own. They mocked me. Especially those closest to me. To them, I was the architect of my own downfall. And maybe... maybe they were right.
But I didn't stay silent. I didn't swallow their words with indifference. I flared up. I shouted. I raged. I defended myself — even when there was nothing left to believe in.
And that reaction only pushed people away even more. I tried to prove something to those
who had long stopped listening. And then... everything collapsed. I cut nearly every tie
myself. Not because I wanted to — But because I could no longer bear the weight of false closeness.
It was easier to be alone than to keep pretending I belonged among the people who called themselves (mine).
My mother... back then, she was more of a neutral figure in my life. We weren't close. But
we weren't enemies either. She didn't humiliate me. She didn't accuse me. But neither did she support me in a way that changed anything. Her words passed by me like echoes from another world. I didn't take them seriously — because I never felt any understanding in them.
And then, one day... she called. And we began to talk. Her voice was different:
Calm. Nonjudgmental. Unforced.
She told me she would no longer dictate what I should do. That I had the right to choose my
own path. And if I found something that was truly mine— She would support it. Genuinely.
Without conditions.
I didn't understand it at first. I hadn't expected it. She had once been strict. Almost cold.
I had blamed her — along with my father — for much of what had broken me. But now, in
her voice, there was something real. Not control — acceptance.
She told me I had to find what truly belonged to me. That I didn't have to live for anyone
else's expectations. And if I chose a path —
I had to walk it. Slowly, but with conviction.
It was the first piece of advice that came without pressure. Only warmth. And for the first time, I thought:
If she could change... maybe there was still a chance for me. Even if all I had left were
pieces.
Even if my mother's voice had stirred something human in me for a brief moment, I was still standing at the edge — without purpose, without direction, without a name. The world still felt hollow, and I was nothing more than a discarded part in a broken machine.
And then... he appeared.
It was 1972. All of humanity held its breath, watching as one man stood alone against an
empire. A name that echoed through halls and made them tremble. A name spoken in whispers, with awe: Robert James Fischer.
I didn't first see him at the chessboard. I didn't begin with his games, his openings, or his
brilliant combinations. What struck me first was not the game — it was him.
I saw his presence — the way he moved, the way he looked, the silence between his words. He didn't need chess to command respect. He could rule with silence, conquer by standing still.
He didn't look like an athlete or an academic. He looked like a man who knew he was
stronger than anyone else. Even if the whole world stood against him — he would not yield.
Because he never doubted himself. Not for a second.
It hit me like lightning. As if my body — long dormant — suddenly came alive. I didn't
understand chess. But I understood this: the game gave something far greater than victory.
It gave power. The very power I had always been missing.
Fischer became my first idol.
Not because he won — but because he was the kind of man who never asked for recognition. He took it.
And I didn't want to become like him. I wanted to become greater. Not the one who follows
in footsteps — but the one who outshines even the light that once inspired him.
That was the moment a flame ignited inside me — clear, alive, and burning.
I would become a chess player. Not just strong. One whose name would one day be written beside Fischer's. Or above it.
And for the first time in years, my eyes held not hatred, not pain — but hope. Hope that I
could become something. That I was worthy. That I was not emptiness... but the beginning.
After that fire ignited inside me, I did something I never would've done before —
I called my mother.
Honestly, I expected doubt. I expected her to say, "Really? Chess?" But what I heard was something entirely different.
She didn't just support me — she said she would help me find a coach, if I was truly ready to go all the way.
And even though her financial situation was far from stable — she still chose to help me. Without hesitation.
That changed everything. Not just the circumstances—me.
It was the first time I felt real support exactly where it was truly needed. Not empty words. Not "hang in there." But actual involvement.
And maybe, in that moment, something was born between us—something that could finally be called a real bond. Not between relatives. But between two human beings
who had finally learned how to hear each other.
I was twenty-two. An age that's far from early for a chess player. But I had what money couldn't buy: intuition. Hunger. Memory. And rage.
I could feel the moves. I memorized patterns.
I devoured games like a starving wolf scents blood. I improved fast. Very fast. And once I started playing in tournaments, I understood,
chess is not just a board:
It's an arena. It's psychology. It's the art of war.
You don't win with moves alone.You have to dominate. With gestures. With silence. With a stare. With posture. With how you reach for a piece. With how long you pause. You enter your opponent's mind — and you plant fear.
Chess didn't just give me a goal. It began to change who I was.
I became colder. I became taller — inside.
I became ruthless. And maybe, just maybe,
I was releasing all the rage I'd kept buried for years.
I wasn't just playing. I was taking revenge.
For everything. For everyone. For myself.
And over time, I realized something:
chess is not just a game. For some, it's a path to enlightenment. A silent discipline of the soul.
For others, it's a way to prove — that their mind is their weapon. Their crown. Their edge.
For others still, it's a door to the unknown:
to chaos and order, darkness and structure,
psychology and destruction.
The chessboard is not 64 squares. It's a map of consciousness. An arena where shadow and light collide, where fear meets will, where calculation dances with madness.
And everyone who sits at that board must choose what they are:
a student. A predator. Or… a god.
It was 1974.The world kept turning in its usual rhythm — but for me, everything revolved around 64 squares.
With every tournament, with every game I played, I felt something inside me begin to shift.
The power I once drew from anger… began to fade. Not disappear — but transform into something else.
I understood: Hatred, rage, the thirst for revenge — they spark motion, but not growth.
They blind you. On the board, and beyond it.
Chess demands more than precision — it demands mastery over the self. You must keep your face and your soul cold — in victory, and in defeat. Emotion is rust. It eats away at calculation, drop by drop.
I learned not to react. Not to rejoice. Not to suffer. Just to move forward. Like a blade that knows where to strike.
And in two years — from the moment I first touched a piece— I became a chess master.
My rating reached 2400 Elo.
All of this happened by mid-1974. Two years from nothing — and I had reached a place others spend their whole lives chasing.
I had started at twenty two. At twenty four, I was the one newspapers wrote about. They called me a prodigy. An anomaly. A phenomenon. Not because I was the youngest — but because I was late… and still overtook them all.
The world watched in disbelief. Chess
federations tried to make sense of it.
Journalists searched for a story. But the truth was simple: I was rising toward the place I'd always belonged — the top.
All that time, my mother was by my side.
Our relationship… it was no longer just "good." We became close — genuinely close.
As if we had been strangers our whole lives until then.
I bought her a luxurious three-bedroom apartment. And for the first time, I saw in her eyes not worry, not doubt — but pride.
By then, I had contracts, prize money, financial freedom. I wasn't surviving — I was choosing. I moved toward greatness. Deliberate. Cold. Relentless.
And more and more, I found myself asking:
How did I change so much in just two years?
How did something rise from ashes that now looked down on everything it once feared?
I never found the answer. Because the answer… was me.
I could feel it: I was the Emperor of the Board.
And soon, the day would come when I would ascend to the summit, where he would already be waiting — Robert James Fischer. The final boss.
And I wouldn't just meet him. I would destroy him.
Because in this world, there can be only one Emperor.
It was 1975. And then it happened something I couldn't have foreseen, not even in my wildest imaginings.
Robert James Fischer — my idol, my compass, my final boss — announced his retirement.
He refused to defend his world championship title. He simply… walked away. No fight. No explanation. No farewell. It shook the entire chess world. But most of all — it shattered me.
I stared into the void, unable to believe it.
The man who had ignited the fire in me.
The one who embodied power, dominance, and ideal. He just vanished.
For a moment, I felt something I never expected to feel: contempt.
What are you doing…? Weren't you supposed to be the Emperor…? And instead, you turned out to be a peasant wearing a king's crown?
An Emperor doesn't walk away. An Emperor never steps down from the board. An Emperor dies on the final square, fighting to the last move.
In his place, the title of world champion went to Gert Keller. Mild. Moderate. Mechanized.
He didn't win it in battle — he received it through bureaucracy, by technicality.
In aura, in strength, in spirit—he couldn't even stand in Fischer's shadow. He wasn't a lion—he was a bureaucrat in a suit. No fire. No command. No game.
I felt empty. My true rival… was gone. He didn't even honor me with a single match.
All my attempts to challenge him had been ignored. He never appeared in the bracket. He avoided me.
Maybe he knew. Maybe he sensed that no one wants to lose to a newcomer who rose from ashes to break the world.
Yes, the title of champion officially belonged to Gert Keller. But as I looked at him, I knew:
This peasant was not worthy of the crown. I was already the Emperor of the Board.Not by paper. By essence.
And to be honest, I no longer had the desire to play in this dirty theater for a title. I didn't want to defeat mediocrity. I wanted a duel with real god.