Carl Haffner is a brilliant chess tactician but he takes no pleasure from winning. As a master of defence he does not lose either and his games end in stalemate. So too does his life. As we are drawn into a battle on the chessboard, we come to learn about the player. Is it because he is shy or unambitious that victory on the chessboard, and in love, eludes him? Is he vowed to obscurity or does he bring it, unintentionally, upon himself? It is Vienna in 1910 and Haffner is playing the great Lasker for the title of world chess champion. As the games are played, Glavinic takes us back into Haffner's childhood and shows us the influence of his promiscuous father and austere mother, revealing the fantasy world that the boy developed round himself. Glavinic skilfully uses the chessboard as the focus for a tightly woven psychological narrative.