Chess, a Reward… and a Warning from the Future

In the summer of 2003, quite unexpectedly, I received a literary award. In truth, the award was mostly thanks to Lyubo Rusanov, who had been quietly but unwaveringly looking after my books the entire time. It was the same this time — he had submitted my book to a competition organized by the then-existing Union of Bulgarian Writers — the successor to the old socialist-era union, but still a Union, what can you do. I don’t know how things are today, but back in the early 2000s, writers’ unions were multiplying endlessly. It made sense — we were living through a transition. Everything was happening chaotically, both good and bad. I myself had no clue about the Bulgarian literary scene, and the idea of applying for anything would never have crossed my mind. But Lyubo did it — and hop! — there I was, in the spotlight.

Now, the spotlight turned out to be more than modest. The award amounted to 200 leva, and in the small room where the ceremony took place, a group of dignified old gentlemen had gathered — most of them in worn-out suits, all of them “once-upon-a-time” types. Well, Zdravka Evtimova was there too — at least one real writer among the crowd — accepting an award for a short story collection. I remember she said a few words. We exchanged glances. And then we all quietly drifted away — and that was that.

And so, Ghost Park was crowned “Best Bulgarian Children’s Book of 2003.” I’ll leave it at that — since the book had a different fate from its two sisters, mostly thanks to the invaluable help of Mrs. Bencheva. Not that I really distinguish much between my three children. Even today, I sometimes hear people say it was the best of the three Ghost books — a view I don’t share in the slightest. It’s just a bit better known than the others, that’s all.

But it, too, brought forth its share of solid little miracles. The first — and maybe the most important — was the strange symbiosis that emerged between my chess knowledge and the development of the plot, resulting in one of the book’s most crucial moments: the chess match that Firecurl plays against Goliath 5000, the most powerful computer in the Ghost Forest, where the Singularity had long since been reached — meaning the computer wasn’t just intelligent, but virtually equal to, if not beyond, human intelligence in almost every way.

I’ve always been deeply annoyed by the fact that most “chess” stories seem to have been written by people who don’t know the game intimately. Take, for example, The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig. A work of immense symbolic and psychological power — no doubt about that — but whenever Zweig touches directly on chess itself, the remarks are simply laughable. For example, he claims that Czentovic, the fictional world champion, cannot play “blindfold” — meaning without looking at the board. Something as impossible as the story itself — but without its ghostly beauty. Even I — a completely average player (not counting computer assistance) — can play blindfold chess. And what can we say about real geniuses like Alexander Alekhine, who played twenty blindfold games at once?

Another absurdity: the opening move in the climax game is described as h2–h4 — advancing the rightmost white pawn two squares forward. In today’s world, especially in blitz games, it’s not entirely unheard of — quite a few masters use it now. But in classical chess, with serious time controls, such a move is practically a symbolic refusal to fight. The most basic rule of chess is the battle for the center — and h2–h4 completely abandons it. To suggest that champions would play such an opening seriously is pure fantasy.

Well then — in my story, the chess battle is real. Both games I describe originate from my personal practice (maybe someday I’ll publish them, if fate allows). And Firecurl’s experience during the match is authentic — the lived experience of someone who has spent hours at the board, battling fear, exhaustion, and uncertainty for five, six, or more grueling hours. Let me assure you: playing chess at any level above coffeehouse banter is unimaginably brutal, crushing work.

But the truly important thing in this part of the story is how Firecurl learns to play at a super-grandmaster level. Of course, achieving something like that in a few hours would only be possible through magic — and that's where I allowed myself a small compromise, admitting magical intervention into the world of the Ghost Forest. How it happens exactly isn’t so important. What matters is that just a few years later, the process I had described as fantasy happened in real life — though not with human participants.

In 2017 — fourteen years after I wrote Ghost Park — the world, and not just the chess world, exploded with the news that AlphaZero, a super-powerful AI program based on self-learning algorithms, had learned to play chess from scratch to a superhuman level in just four hours [sic!].

I was stunned when I read that — I can’t even describe my amazement. Had I really “predicted” one of the most astonishing technological developments of the century? Had I described as fantasy something that would soon become reality?

I have no idea whether such thoughts have any real basis — or are just bombastic ego-trips. But the parallels between the story I imagined and the real-world developments are astounding — at least in my own mind.

I finished the second book and started the third. But now, my writer’s momentum collided head-on with the realities of life — and Sisyphus’ stone came crashing back down to the foot of the hill. Maybe even lower.

But more on that — in the next part.