Joe Tarr
In 2017, Awonder Liang became one of the youngest grandmasters ever. But can he beat a middle-aged journalist?
It’s baffling to me how I can be hooked on something I’m so bad at. But I love chess. Only slightly more than I hate it.
When I win, I marvel at the game’s complexity and artistry. When I lose, I find it infuriatingly impenetrable. I’m slightly worse than mediocre.
For years, I’ve followed the career of Madison’s Awonder Liang. He’s currently ranked 18th in the United States. He’s defeated the second-ranked player in the world, Fabiano Caruana, who will challenge world champion Magnus Carlsen for the title in November. It’s conceivable that Liang himself could one day be world champion.
After Liang won his third consecutive U.S. Junior Chess Championship title in July, I knew that I had to finally play him. I wanted to get some sense of what the game can be like at its highest level and the 16-year-old Liang is the most formidable chess opponent I’m likely to ever face.
Not that I have much trouble finding players who can handily beat me. But I thought maybe he could give me some insight into this mystifying game.
Liang and his mom meet me at the Sequoya branch of the Madison Public Library. Liang started playing chess when he was 5, after his older brother won a medal in a chess tournament. “I also wanted to have a medal, so I started playing,” he explains.
After a few years, he was better than both his brother and his dad. These days, he usually studies the game for a couple of hours a day, reviewing matches of great players and his own losses.
“A big part of it is looking at the mistakes I’ve made,” says Liang, a West High student. “You’re almost always guaranteed to make the same mistake a couple of times, but you hopefully learn from it.”
In 2017, at 14 years, 1 month, 20 days old, Liang became one of the youngest to achieve grandmaster status, the highest title in the game. Being a chess prodigy involves traveling the world playing in tournaments. Does the stress get to him?
“Right before the game, you always get a little bit nervous. But then as you’re playing the game, it goes away,” he says. “If I’m playing someone who is not as good as me, I might relax a little bit. At the end of the day, you’re just playing a lot of chess.” He looks very relaxed today.
I ask him if he’s grasped anything about chess that eludes casual players. But it quickly becomes clear that Liang can’t offer me any easy insights. His have come through studying hours a day and learning from his failures.
“The game has been around for hundreds of years and we still haven’t figured out everything about it,” he says. “That’s one of the fascinating things. You can know so much about the game, but there’s still so much more left to discover.
After chatting for a bit, Liang pulls out the chess board. In our first game, Liang has me in trouble by the third move. Playing black, I clumsily exchange a knight for a bishop and end up with doubled-up pawns on my queen side of the board.
While I try to recover, Liang quickly develops his pieces and mounts an attack. By move 18, he has checkmated me. We review the game and Liang points out my mistakes and blunders.
In the second game, I do slightly better. It feels like I’m matching him, move for move, countering his aggression. I even start to feel a little smug. Perhaps there is a smirk on my face. But then a few moves later, at move 22, I realize that I’m one move from being mated.
Mercifully, a library worker kicks us out of the study room we’re using. Liang says, “you played well,” but I feel like a 5-year-old getting a pat on the back as I struggle to learn checkers.
Then I remember how Liang had earlier explained that elite chess players are all relatively young, which makes me feel slightly better: I am old.
“Most players these days are kinda young, because it takes a lot of stamina to be able to play for hours and concentrate,” he says. “Even though chess may not be physically that taxing, to keep up the level of concentration isn’t that easy.”
Number of grandmasters in the world: 1,762
Grandmasters in the U.S.: 101
Longest reigning chess champion: Emanuel Lasker, who held the title for 27 years
Liang’s favorite players: Bobby Fischer, Magnus Carlsen
One of Liang’s favorite victories: Against Wesley So, the second ranked American, on March 31, 2019
Liang on that game: “It was a very complicated game, and then I managed to take the upper hand and convert it to a victory.”
