Warpaint

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Warpaint

Anyone remember Nigel Short's hair when he played in the 1997 FIDE Championship tourney? How could you forget it! I heard as many people remarking on his hair as his game. In fact, it seemed impossible to remark on one without commenting on the other. It wasn't that Nigel went blonde, oh, no. In the pictures I saw it was a brilliantly unnatural yellow. It glowed. Speculation and jokes were running that his outstanding performance was due to his hair utterly unnerving his opponent.

I can well imagine his opponents sitting down across the board from him, looking at the punkish yellow bristles on the top of Nigel's head and wondering if, perhaps, ol' Nigel had slipped a cog. I can't imagine them--remember these were the best players in the world--being thrown off their game by Nigel's unearthly halo of hair. And yet...

I suspect that the hair did have something to do with his magnificent performance. I think Nigel dyed his hair as an expression of confidence, power, defiance, of bold unflinching aggression. He certainly looked aggressive! That "in your face" attitude showed up on the board, too. He played take-no-prisoners cutthroat chess, winning and drawing when he needed to, mercilessly pushing all the wannabees to the breaking point. He was a savage, a ruthless pirate scuttling the championship dreams of his opponents.

I loved it. I loved the hair. All that was missing was a flashy gold earring and a knife between his teeth. He scared people silly, but it wasn't the hair. It was what the hair meant. Nigel was after the crown, and there would be a lot of blood on the board round after round before he was thwarted. The hair was a signal, a sign of his inner self. He had dyed it in preparation for doing battle just as many people through the ages have painted their faces, their bodies, braided their hair, and ritualistically prepared for battle.

ChessChick has her own warpaint ritual before important games or tourneys. I've toyed with the idea of doing something to my hair, but haven't yet gone for hair a la Nigel. Hair mascara is tempting, though. There's a mascara-like wand which you use to add color highlights--like red, blue, green, gold--to your hair. I have the awful feeling that if I did something like that people would think I'd been painting a room and gotten paint in my hair. So, forget hair. The real deal is nail polish. No one can mistake nail polish for a painting mishap. They may wonder if you murdered your opponent in the previous round from the apparent blood on your nails, though!

It began with the observation that on those rare occasions when I painted my nails, I played better. I carefully selected a red, "Dragon Red", if I knew I would be facing a Sicilian. The warpaint didn't intimidate my opponent, but I did it when I was feeling very self-confident, prepared, aggressive, so being a dangerous player became linked with bright, flashy nail color. I wore blood red for my first tournament and I still have more wins with that color than any other. I've branched out to more unorthodox colors like blues and greens, oranges, purples and browns. ("Can I win with this?" I asked my coach quite seriously, presenting him with lizard green nails. He stammered, nonplussed, and sort of nodded. Green has that effect on people.) The darker the color the better. Solid colors rather than frosted feel more aggressive; bright highly saturated colors are favored over pastels. I beat a guy rated about 500 points USCF higher than me when I was wearing "Espresso", a rather nasty-looking brown. The game was played in ICC, so he never saw my warpaint, but he felt the sting of the attack all right!

A while back I discovered decals and I put gold thunderbolts on the red fingernails. Oh, I played the tourney of my life that day. I had spectators around my board. Lightening struck during that tourney, but it was not the fingernail polish that did it. I didn't notice the gold lightening bolts on my blood red nails when I picked up his queen. Lightening had struck and the game was bloody, but it had nothing to do with the color of my fingernails. I was good.

Someone like Revlon ought to invent a line of nail polish for female chess players. Besides "Dragon Red" (Revlon really does have a color by that name!), they could add "Grob Green", "Elephant Gambit" (a sort of blue-grey), English Ice (a blinding white), Smothered Mate (gotta be blue!), "Fianchetto" (a breath-taking orange), "Zwischenzug" (??), and other evocative names for the reds like "Queen Sac", "Gambit Pawn", "Royal Fork", "Mating Net" and "Poisoned Pawn". It could become a sort of secret code for female players. Is she wearing Exchange Variation or is that shade more of a Main Line red, the hapless male player will wonder anxiously. Of course us girls will never tell!

Cindy Crawford sits in front of a chess board. Her male opponent nervously chews his (unpainted) nails. She makes a move, camera moves in close on her fingernails. She's wearing "Double Fianchetto". "Mate!" she says cheerily, turning to smile at the camera. No, no, no, that will never do. We'll need Judith Polgar as the spokesperson for this line of nail polish--with Shirov across the board grinning gamely as she delivers mate. Show a game played out over a series of commercials with repartee and bottles of nail polish lined up at the edge of the board with the captured pieces. Judith nonchalantly paints her nails while Shirov stares pensively at the board. It would be great fun!

Until the world of commercial cosmetics catches up with the needs of us chesschicks we will just have to adapt the colors at hand (Rename 'em if you want to!) to be warpaint for our battles on the 64 squares, as our expression of confidence, power, and bold unflinching aggression....unless we want to take a chance on hair a la Nigel.