Cheater's Play

Information

Status

Completed

Year

2021

Author

Mad Sadie

• Winning a game they don't know how to play.
  Sep 22, 2021

Reviews

Community Reviews(2)

• MK bk-201Royal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  A short and surprisingly wholesome love story about a couple with the man being a mind reader and a woman who can see the future, knowing the other person is cheating in this game of chess they decide to throw the match out the window and just have fun, and it leads to a romantic development between the 2.
• RznRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  The author says they do not know how to play chess, and that might sell that in this piece, but at the same time the unfamiliarity causes me to be skeptical of not the plot, but the reaction to this being allowed to be played out. Granted the two characters have special abilities, but if they start playing like 100 ELO it could be taken as something of a deliberately thrown game, or a mockery and an investigation would probably be done. Chess has had a lot of drama in it and telepathy would ruin one character even at middling machine test. I do not really see how 'seeing the future' helps with chess either.
  I'll give the author that leeway and assume the best of the abilities. This was fun and a bit ridiculous, but as something of a decent chess player I can safely say that most openings are memorized to the nth move and telepathy won't matter because the positional dominance of a handful of openings are devoid of thought. London System for one. Real players can see the future on an opponent doing that and they'll still lose even with solid play. So I doubt either of them would generally survive to meet one another in this way.
  It's a good story, but the situation is unrealistic - then again, both MCs have cheat abilities so maybe I should not be so serious.