AUTHOR’S NOTE
“I failed to make the chess team because of my height.”
—Woody Allen
Bobby Fischer and Donald Byrne evidently both met the height requirement. They played what has been dubbed The Game of the Century in 1956 in New York City. Bobby Fischer was thirteen years old and Donald Byrne was twenty-six, a leading American chess master. Midway through the game, Byrne saw that he would lose. Because Fischer was only thirteen, and because Byrne was a gentleman, he finished the game. It was exactly eighty-two moves.
So get out a chessboard and play the moves listed at the top of each chapter. (I’ve made them very clear so you should have no problems even if you’re a beginner.) Enjoy this amazing game.
Why a chess game? This was J. T. Ellison’s brilliant brainchild and played right into the title—The End Game. When she realized we had eighty-two chapters, the same number of moves that are in The Game of the Century, she knew it was meant to be. She could be heard singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” all over Nashville.
In a game of chess, toppling the King is the goal. In The End Game, the moves and countermoves made by the players of both sides lead to an actual end game where either side could win. Fortunately, for all of us, the right side won.
Rudolf Spielmann, 1883–1942, known as the Master of Attack, once said, “In the opening a master should play like a book, in the mid-game he should play like a magician, in the ending he should play like a machine.”
—Catherine Coulter