GG Chikovani

Maka Chikovani builds industrial robot arms in Tbilisi and was a national junior chess player in a country where the women's game is a matter of public pride. She kept the calculation and traded the openings for servomotors. She still names her lines. What she is playing gets announced in the vocabulary she grew up in, prophylaxis and zugzwang and the exchange sacrifice, applied to checkers with total confidence and no translation whatever, and in three seasons precisely one opponent has known what she meant. She was delighted. The game reached her through the factory's night-shift board, and she reviews a loss the way she reviews a fault log.