Gifted Academy: The Perfect Student

She assumed a very relaxed posture.

She didn't seem to expect very much from me—maybe it wasn't even the first time a tutor posed such a proposal. Her father must have hired quite a few of the best tutors in the entire country with this type of wealth, especially if he was even willing to threaten me in order to get his daughter to study.

Beating a chess prodigy was not going to be easy.

I began with a simple opening. The two of us moved our pieces, one at a time.

Pawn to E4.

She responded with Pawn to E5.

I played Knight to F3.

She responded with Knight to C6.

I could tell that she was pretty relaxed about the entire match. She didn't try to do anything out-of-the-ordinary. All of her moves were incredibly robotic, simply responding with the most common moves for black.

I played Pawn to D4, leading into the Scotch Game.

She responded with Pawn takes on D4.

I then played Bishop C4, moving into the Scotch Gambit.

From here, she continued to play relatively predictable moves. It seemed she still hasn't begun trying to show her chess proficiency. I played extremely aggressively, trading pieces and simplifying the board wherever I could.

A few moves later, she began showing her true strength.

To her, my moves would still seem amateurish. Normally, chess players on a high level would not try to trade pieces constantly like this. Games were usually quite technical, requiring a player to have intricate knowledge of specific positions and board states.

However, this was my plan from the start.

Quite a few moves later, most of the board had been cleared. There were only a few pawns and some of the weaker pieces left. Our queens and rooks had been traded, and in terms of pieces, she was up by a bishop.

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Ah, this was going to be quite a strain on my brain.

I took a few minutes for every move.

It seemed that she wasn't too concerned by the time I was taking.

Move after move, I slowly reposition my pieces.

I noticed that she was getting more and more worried.

Knight to A5.

She replied with Pawn to F5.

Knight to B3.

Pawn to F4.

Pawn to A5.

Pawn to H6.

Pawn to B5.

Knight D7.

Pawn takes on A6.

Suddenly, she stopped her looked at the board.

Her composure had been broken as she observed the position of the pieces.

"No way..."

She played Pawn to F3.

I replied with Pawn to A7.

After her Pawn to F2, I was able to promote to a queen with my A pawn.

"Crap..."

She stared at the board for a few minutes.

I was now up several points. There was basically no chance of victory for her anymore.

A chess prodigy like herself would be able to see that this was over.

"H-how... how did you go from that losing position to this... how did you calculate so..."

Chess is a strategy game, after all.

First of all, she has definitely studied way more lines than I have. In terms of pure knowledge of theory, she is far out of my league. I had about as much understanding of chess opening as a beginner. As such, I stand no chance if I try to play a technical game with lots of known positions. With much more experience than me, she would easily be able to recognize patterns that I would never be able to find.

I only had one hope to beat her. I would have to force the game into an end game as soon as possible and try to outdo her on calculations alone. In late-game chess, with not many pieces on the board, it is a pure competition of computation. There have been computers which have 'solved chess' when there are a certain number of pieces on the board. However, no human would ever be able to achieve that.

As such, if you can calculate further and more accurately than your opponent, there is a chance of victory even if you are in a losing position. When the board is cramped with lots of pieces, it's physically impossible to predict many moves in advance due to the practically infinite amount of different moves. However, when there are only a few pieces, it is possible to calculate over ten moves in advance.

Therefore, I played extremely aggressively in order to trade pieces off of the board. I was helped by her initial underestimation of me, which may have led to some inaccuracies in her early moves.

Once there were only a few pieces left, I simply calculated further than her.

The game was determined as soon as the board began to clear.

After being speechless for a few seconds, she finally uttered her words of defeat.

"I-I... resign..."

That was a lot of effort.

"Now, you remember the bet, don't you?"

"U-um... f-fine... just today, I'll study with you."

She slowly began packing up the chessboard. As she put the pieces back into the box, she looked toward me.

"Are you also a chess prodigy?" She asked.

"No."

"But... you were the first person to ever beat me... since I was eight years old."

It was true that I beat her this time. However, I was still far inferior to her in terms of chess. I only managed to win due to her underestimation of me and also some tricky tactics—if we were to play again, it would almost be guaranteed that I'd lose. This was a one-time event.

"I wouldn't be able to beat you again."

"Huh."

"You could tell, couldn't you? I have no knowledge of chess theory."

She packed away the rest of the pieces.

"I just don't understand... who are you?" She asked.

"I'm just a student at National High School."

"Why did my father ask you to tutor me?"

"Uh, I guess you could say... personal reasons."

She was unhappy with my lacklustre explanation—however, I couldn't tell her the real reason.

"Anyways, what's your name?" I asked.

"It's Hanae—Hanae Kanako."

"Alright, Kanako, I want you to do a test and show me how much you know."

She suddenly seemed to be distressed after hearing what I said.

There were a few workbooks laid out on the table. From what I could tell, they seemed to be the exact same subjects that we were being taught.

Let's see how smart you are at academics.