RajWin: Six Strokes Before His Next Turn

1. RajWin: Six Strokes I Could Not Interrupt

Vidya took six strokes to finish the last board. I remember every one because I spent the first three waiting for her to make the mistake that would let me explain the evening differently.

She pocketed a white, then the queen, then the white that covered it. Three whites remained. Two of my blacks waited near pockets where I would have welcomed another turn.

I did not get one.

My name is Ashok. I was forty-eight and had won our singles title four times. Vidya was forty, returning after a workshop fire had destroyed her board and interrupted her season. I had called her entry a sympathy exhibition.

In the final, she had already beaten me twenty-five to fourteen in the first game. She now led twenty to sixteen in the second. If she cleared her remaining whites while my two blacks stayed on the board, she would receive two points plus the three-point queen credit, because she was still below twenty-two before this board.

Five points. Enough to finish the game at twenty-five and the match two-nil.

I knew the arithmetic as well as she did.

Behind the barrier stood her twenty-two-year-old son, Arjun. Months earlier I had told him to take his mother home before she embarrassed herself. I could still remember how politely I had said it, as though cruelty became advice when delivered in a calm voice.

Now he watched the board without looking at me. For the first time that evening, I understood how completely a person could be defeated while the final pieces were still moving.

2. The Exhibition I Invented

The fire had closed Vidya's small workshop. She had been treated for a hand injury and returned to ordinary activity gradually, with professional guidance. I knew only that she had been away and that her first practice session looked uncertain.

That was enough for me to decide what her comeback meant.

At an open club evening, she missed three direct strokes she would once have taken confidently. I asked the organiser whether we could give her a short demonstration instead of placing her in the competitive group.

Vidya heard. She asked what part of the entry conditions she had failed to meet.

I said I was trying to spare her.

“Then spare me the announcement,” she replied.

I did not. When Arjun arrived to collect her, I told him that sometimes family members had to make difficult decisions for proud people. He asked whether she had requested help leaving.

I said he would understand when he had watched enough sport.

The following week, a draft poster described her as an inspirational guest. She had entered the qualifying event, not a guest appearance. She had the organiser correct it before play began.

I treated the correction as vanity.

After the final, I saw that discarded draft in her preparation folder. She had written the qualifying dates on its back. Beneath them were columns of attempted strokes, successful contacts and mistakes that repeated on faster boards.

The label I gave her had become scrap paper for work I had not bothered to notice.

3. The Board That Ran Faster

Vidya's home practice board was gone. Her replacement practice space used a faster surface, and at first she carried too much force into familiar strokes.

The pocket failures were not all alike. Some came from striking too thickly. Others came from choosing a force that made a slight contact error harder to survive. Still others came from trying to reproduce a stroke she remembered instead of reading the pieces in front of her.

I learned this from her records later. At the time, I saw only a few missed shots and called them decline.

She practised short sets with clear targets, rested when she needed to and returned on another day. The records showed uneven progress. A good session did not erase the next difficult one.

Arjun filmed several practice positions from a fixed angle. They reviewed the intended contact and the actual path, not just whether a piece happened to fall. When a pocket resulted from an unintended collision, she marked it separately.

She worked on direct cuts with modest force, on keeping the striker from disturbing a second useful piece and on recognising when a queen attempt would leave no credible cover.

After each set, she changed the arrangement. The aim was to identify the new angle, not memorise a single successful picture.

One page contained a note I found uncomfortable to read: “Do not perform the old Vidya. Play this board.”

I had spent months demanding that she prove she was unchanged. She had been learning what needed to change.

4. The Qualifier I Did Not Watch

Vidya won her first qualifying match in three games. She lost the opening game, adjusted to the surface and recovered the next two. In the following match, she led early and still had to survive a disciplined comeback from a younger opponent.

She entered the main event with two demanding qualifying wins and notes on the strokes she still wanted to improve.

I did not watch either match. I was preparing my own campaign and hearing selected reports from people who assumed I wanted reassurance.

“She's careful now,” one said.

I heard “limited”.

“She doesn't hit as hard,” another said.

I heard “afraid”.

By the semifinal, the reports became harder to arrange into that story. She cleared a congested late board with controlled direct play and beat a player I had expected to reach the final.

I watched the recording. At one point she left the queen alone and took an ordinary white. On a later turn, the queen and a realistic cover became available together. She completed both and won the board.

It was sound judgment. I knew that because I would have praised the same sequence in my own game.

I still told an interviewer that the final would test whether she could sustain that level against experience.

When the interviewer asked what experience I meant, I listed my titles. Vidya's earlier competitive years did not enter the answer.

I arrived at the final carrying a record of four championships and an interpretation of my opponent that had survived far longer than the evidence supporting it.

5. Twenty-Five to Fourteen

In the first game I tried to make the board uncomfortable for Vidya by leaving difficult contacts and changing the rhythm. It was a legitimate plan. She answered it with better play than I expected.

When a direct route closed, she changed the striker position instead of forcing the original line. When a piece remained reachable only through a poor percentage stroke, she chose the useful available piece and made me face the consequences on my next turn.

I won boards with sharp openings and accurate direct pockets. My successful turns, however, were separated by errors she punished, and her successful turns kept more of the next position under control.

On one board I pocketed the queen but failed the cover. It returned to the centre. Vidya later took it at a better moment, covered and won the board. The queen points counted because her score was still eligible.

I disliked the applause because the sequence had been so plain.

She closed the game twenty-five to fourteen.

During the interval, I examined the surface and wondered whether it was faster than the board used in my semifinal. It was the same speed for both of us. Vidya had adjusted more efficiently.

I said nothing to the umpire because there was no irregularity to report.

Arjun brought his mother water in the permitted break. She asked him to move the bottle away from the edge where somebody might knock it over. Her attention to a small practical detail irritated me. I wanted the first-game win to have made her less precise.

6. The Lead I Finally Earned

I played the start of game two well. I controlled the opening boards, chose direct pockets when they were available and made Vidya work for every turn.

At one stage I led thirteen to ten.

The crowd became louder when I pocketed a difficult black. I could feel the old version of the match returning: the champion had assessed the challenger and would now put the order right.

Vidya did not alter her whole approach because of that sound. She adjusted to the position.

On the next board, she kept her first successful stroke modest enough to preserve a second white's route. The second pocket gave her a useful continuation. She finished the board without attempting the spectacular rebound some spectators were calling for.

I won another board and reached sixteen. She answered through two strong boards of her own, building to twenty.

Now I was four points behind, with the match already one game against me.

I knew she could finish from twenty if the board offered sufficient points, including queen credit while she remained eligible. I therefore had to balance my own clearance against what I left on the board if her turn succeeded.

I tried to make the position inconvenient, reduced my remaining blacks and kept two genuine finishing chances alive.

The final board grew from that contest. Her last turn would have to be accurate because mine, if it returned, would be dangerous.

7. The White Before the Queen

Before Vidya's decisive turn, she had five whites left and I had two blacks. The queen was still on the board. She had already pocketed enough of her own pieces to be eligible to take it.

My last stroke had missed a black by a small margin. It stopped near the pocket. The attempt was sound; the contact was not exact enough. I sat back and waited.

Vidya's first useful choice was not the queen.

A white lay where clearing it would remove an obstruction from the next route. She placed the striker carefully and pocketed that white with a controlled direct stroke. The path to the queen became clearer without scattering the remaining pieces.

Then she took the queen.

I looked at the cover immediately. It was available, but not automatic. She had to change the striker's position and judge the angle. The white moved cleanly into the pocket on the next stroke.

Queen covered. Three whites remained.

I began counting the possibilities for a miss. One white needed a cut from an awkward position. Another could be disturbed if she used too much force on the wrong approach. The third waited farther away, reachable but unforgiving.

She examined all three before choosing the next stroke.

I had spent the first part of the match looking for signs of hesitation. Now I was watching the same pause and recognising planning. The difference was not in how long she waited. It was in whether I was willing to understand what she was doing.

8. Three Whites, No New Chance

The first of the three went into a near pocket. Vidya used a restrained contact that left the striker away from the other useful route. She retained the turn.

Two whites remained.

She moved along the permitted baseline and took a finer cut. The piece touched the inside edge of the pocket and fell. It was close enough to make the audience gasp, but the intended line was clear.

One remained.

My two blacks had not moved. I knew exactly which one I would take first if she missed. Thinking about that next turn helped me avoid accepting how little control I now had over whether it arrived.

Vidya checked her striker placement. She looked once from the last white to the pocket, settled her hand and struck.

The piece dropped.

Six strokes in the turn: a white, the queen, its white cover and three further whites. All nine of her whites were now pocketed; my two blacks remained.

The umpire awarded two points for those blacks and three for the queen she had covered and whose board she had won. Her score before the board had been twenty, so the queen credit was valid.

Twenty-five to sixteen. Two games to nil.

She turned towards Arjun. He was laughing with both hands pressed against his mouth, as though he could not decide whether to cheer or keep the moment quiet enough to remember.

I looked down at the two blacks. They were still waiting for the turn I had spent six strokes expecting.

9. The Defence I Wanted to Show Her

After signing, I asked Vidya whether she would review the last board with me. She agreed after the presentation.

I set up my final missed black as accurately as the recording allowed. I wanted to show that the attempt had been reasonable and that a slightly better contact would have changed the turn.

She agreed. Then she asked what I would have done with the second black if the first had fallen.

I showed the route. She pointed out a collision that could make it less straightforward than I had imagined. We adjusted the pieces and tested it. My proposed finish required more care than the story I had been telling myself.

Then we examined her six strokes. She showed why the first white came before the queen and how it preserved the cover. I tried the same sequence. On the fourth stroke, I used too much force and disturbed the fifth shot's position.

She waited while I reset it.

Arjun watched without saying anything. I remembered telling him to take his mother home and felt the sentence return with every piece I placed back on the board.

“I called your entry an exhibition,” I said.

Vidya looked at the score display, where both game results remained visible.

“You can correct that when they ask for your match report.”

“I will.”

She handed me the striker. “Then finish the position first.”

I did, more carefully. It took two attempts to make the final three whites without disturbing the route.

10. The New Practice Time

The report listed the scores, the legal queen credit and the six-stroke finish. I described the work I had seen instead of explaining her victory through sympathy, courage or my own surprise.

Vidya read it before the club posted it and corrected one detail: the cover had followed immediately after the queen, not after an intervening stroke. I changed the sentence.

A week later, her photograph replaced the old champion's display near the entrance. I had passed my own photograph there for three years without noticing how much space it occupied.

In the new picture, Vidya was looking at the board. Arjun stood beside her holding the striker case. The trophy was slightly off-centre.

I found her in the practice room on the faster board. She was working on the difficult cut from the final, changing the position a little after each set of attempts.

I asked whether she wanted the slower board brought out.

“This one still has something to teach me,” she said.

I put my case on the table and asked whether she wanted an opponent for a practice game.

She checked the time, then pointed to the chair across from her.

“Best of three?”

I sat down. This time, before the first strike, I checked the surface as carefully as she did.

Outside the room, someone stopped to look at the new photograph. I heard my name mentioned as the previous champion. Vidya arranged the pieces. I kept my eyes on the board.