Once upon a time in the medium-small town of Skewers, Washington, there lived a 52-year-old man by the name of Mr. Humman, who considered himself a top-tier chess-player. Now, Mr. Humman was not generally considered the strongest player in town; if you asked the other inhabitants of Skewers, most of them would've named Mr. Neumann as their town's chess champion. But Mr. Humman did not see things that way himself. On Humman's theory, he was really quite good at the Ethiopian opening and variation in chess, while Neumann was more of an all-rounder; a jack of all trades, and therefore, of logical necessity, master of none. There were certain tiers of ability in the town chess club, and Humman and Neumann were both in the top tier, according to Mr. Humman, and that was all you could really say about it, according to Mr. Humman.

Humman did not often play against Neumann directly; they had not played in a few years, in fact. If you asked Humman why not, he might have said that it was more gracious to give younger players the chance to play him, rather than the top-tier chess-players being too exclusive among themselves. But in truth that was a sort of question Mr. Humman would not think about spontaneously or ask himself without outside prompting. Humman was not the sort to go around comparing himself mentally to Neumann all the time. Humman was satisfied to have reached the top tier of chess ability, without going around comparing himself to his fellow top-tier players.

One week it came to pass that a FIDE-rated International Master of chess was visiting their small town, to meet the family there of a woman that he was dating. The visiting Master had been much chuffed to hear that the town of Skewers had a thriving chess club as one of its central civic institutions, and so the Master offered to play one game each against anyone interested, over the next few days. Mr. Assi, was his name.

One of the less polite young ladies of the town, whom some might have called a troll, jokingly asked Humman at the town's grocery how he fancied his chances against Mr. Assi.

In truth Mr. Humman had not really chosen, as such, to play a game against Mr. Assi. But everyone around him seemed to take so much for granted that he would, that there didn't seem to be any face-preserving way not to. So Mr. Humman thought about the young lady's question a few moments, and said, "F...

Pierre

Pierre