Trivia: This prose piece is about which chess champion?

Here is an interesting prose piece. Actually, it's an insight into any chess player's mind. Can you guess who has written this or about whom is this prose piece?

She did not open her eyes even to see the time remaining on her clock or to look across the table or to see the enormous crowd who had come to this autitorium to watch her play. She let all of that go from her mind and allowed herself only the chessboard of her imagination with its intricate deadlock. It did not really matter who was playing the black pieces or whether the material board sat in Moscow or New York...

She did not even hear the ticking of the clock. She held her mind in silence and let it move over the surface of the imagined board, combining and recombining the arrangements of pieces so that the black ones could not stop the advance of the pawn she would choose...

For a moment her mind became numb with weariness and the board unclear. She heard herself sigh as she forced it back to clarity. She leaned wearily back in her chair with her eyes still closed and let the screen of her mind go dark for a moment. Then she brought it back for a final look. And this time with a start she saw it. Mate in nineteen.

She opened her eyes and squinted for a moment at the brightness of the stage before looking at her clock. She had 12 minutes left. Her eyes had been closed for over an hour. If she had made an error there would be no time for a new strategy.

When she set the knight down there was complete silence...

Is it about Almira Skripchenko or has she written it?



Is it about Alisa Galliamova or has she written it?



Is it about Zhao Zhue or has she written it?

Well, if you haven't guessed it, this interesting piece of prose is from the novel The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis. The novel is about Beth Harmon who is orphaned at eight and has to take tranquilizers at the Home she is kept in. But in the novel Beth goes on to become a world-renowned chess champion! Read more about the novel on Wikipedia.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
www.chessblog.com