All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir About Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything

On page 159 of All the Wrong Moves author Sasha Chaplin quotes an eccentric chess grandmaster who said, "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." These lines could have served as this book's epigraph.

Twenty-something Canadian journalist Sasha Chapin is overtaken by a sudden obsession with chess. When online games no longer satisfy him, he takes lessons from a low-level grandmaster and travels the world to play in face-to-face tournaments (he seems to have an unlimited travel budget for his all-consuming hobby). Along the way he finds love, meets colorful characters, and indulges in mind-altering substances. All the Wrong Moves is Chapin's entertaining memoir of show more this pivotal year and a half of his life. Recommended. show less

This is a wonderful chess memoir that deserves the highest accolades. I suppose it helps if one loves chess but is not very good at it, because then one will reverberate with the author's joys and frustrations. It's the perfect gift for the chess player in your life. But even if one has never played a single game, Chapin's scintillating prose makes every page a delight. We have certainly not heard the last from wise-beyond-his-years Sasha Chapin!

I am a chess player. So a memoir by an average player like myself about their chess exploits has my interest. I enjoyed the author's description of various tournaments or games. I could relate to this, enjoying hearing about the author's triumphs and failures over the board. But the author is so prone to hyperbole that I never really felt I understood him. The writing was so full of literary flair, that I never got to know the real person underneath all that flair. Still, I loved reading about his chess life and games, nonetheless.

Sort of a depressing book about a young man traveling around the world trying to come to grips with chess, love and obsessions. Although his obsession with chess is believable. it really isn't understandable nor explained well. Sasha Chapin describes his encounters with chess tournaments in Nepal, India and in the US, as he tried to push up his chess ratings. Chapin hires a chess master, Ben Finegold, to teach him some skills at the game. He describes several chess games with people better or worse than him, and how he tried to take on higher rated opponents in order to game the system.
Of all the types of writing I've seen, this most resembles therapy writing where people try to analyse and explain their own behavior to a therapist. show more
Recommended for larger chess and game collection libraries, but not for others. show less

DNF at page 55. I was an Asia bum for 2 years and have great stories. Often people tell me I should write a book. I always say that the stories are better for cocktail accompanied chatter, and that as a book it would get tortured and tedious. This book confirmed that for me. The chess angle doesn't really help.