Roy Russell III pushes his walker slowly across his studio apartment and sits down alone at a tiny kitchen table, the centerpiece of his newly narrow world.
With each move, his phone pings with a sound akin to a door knock. Tiny LED lights embedded around the board direct Russell where to place the opponent’s pieces.
Alone, in the silence of his room, Russell engages in these rehabilitative sessions that he hopes will help him to return as a top competitor in a close-knit D.C. chess community.
But he’s battling more than a computer: These games help the 58-year-old recover from medical disability and loss. Every day, he grapples with the frailty of life after three strokes destabilized his.
The most serious blow to Russell’s health hit last spring, when doctors revived him on a Washington Hospital Center operating table during surgery to amputate a toe because of complications from diabetes. He later awoke in a rehab facility in Maryland.
“It was the third stroke that really messed with me,” he says.
The strokes left him with a weakened right side, ending his work as a handyman, Uber driver and special police officer. Subsisting on disability payments forced him to move from independent living in Northwest Washington to a high-rise building about a mile north of the U.S. Capitol, run by the nonprofit So Others Might Eat.
His marriage ended.
He can no longer help his children and grandchildren.
His mind is occasionally foggy.
But the former champion remains driven.
“Chess is about everyday life,” Russell says. “I have to prove to myself that I can get better, that I can be able to go back to the way it used to be, how I used to live my life.”
Russell started playing chess in elementary school to defy friends who called it a “grown man’s game.”
So, he watched the adults play. By junior high and then high school, Russell became tough to beat. As an adult, he played in Dupont Circle between assignments as a bike courier and around the Petworth area.
In 2009 he met Jamaal Abdul-Alim, a chess journalist, competitor and informal Howard University Chess Club adviser. He encouraged Russell to enter tournaments. In 2010, Russell won the U1200 section in the Atlantic City International. More victories came at the Eastern Open in 2014 and 2018.
Now, opponents include the memories of his previous life, which he endures with clenched teeth and occasional tears.
“When I think about it, I’m miserable,” Russell says. “Chess helps me to keep my mind off it.”
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Atop his bedside table are medicine bottles, a phone charger and a composition notebook that includes an assortment of famous openings and attacks by grandmasters. He studies YouTube videos on strategy.
“The way he handles it — it’s awe-inspiring. I don’t know if I could handle it,” says Abdul-Alim. “I just admire the fact that he’s willing to get up and keep on fighting, keep studying and not let this stroke defeat him or define him.”
Abdul-Alim reveres Russell’s skill but fears a challenge that can beat any competitor: isolation. So Abdul-Alim takes him around town to play, to group sessions with an international chess master, or he brings other players by.
On a recent afternoon, Abdul-Alim arrives with former Howard University Chess Club president Malik Castro-DeVarona to challenge Russell at his apartment. The men sit at the kitchen table and shake hands before the student moves a white pawn to begin.
For nearly an hour, they exchange moves without a word. Sounds of power tools and hammering echo in the room from a nearby construction site. Abdul-Alim takes photos to document key frames of the game.
Finally, Castro-DeVarona slides his white bishop diagonally and across the board and smoothly snatches Russell’s black knight.
The elder player grits his teeth and pumps his fist in frustration, realizing defeat lies ahead.
Russell soon concedes the game. Afterward, the trio conduct a postmortem analysis of the session as Russell escorts his guests out of his home. He repeatedly highlights his “blunder” that left the knight vulnerable.
He keeps talking as they slowly walk to the elevator. The Howard student turns and gently signals an end to the conversation.
“That was a good game,” Castro-DeVarona says.
A smile emerges beneath Russell’s graying beard. “Yes, it was a good game.”
