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Left: chess prodigy Jeff
Sarwer, 8, playing in
New York in 1986; his
father, Mike, is top right.
Below: now 32, Sarwer
is winning a fortune at
Europe’s poker tables
Feature Back in the game
FROM PRODIGY
TO POKER KING
At the age of eight, Jeff Sarwer was a chess champion. By his
mid-teens he had vanished in the clutches of his abusive,
Svengali-like father. Now he has resurfaced as one of Europe’s
leading poker players. Howard Swains discovers the truth
about Sarwer’s missing years — and his fascinating endgame
a 23
n 1986, when he was eight years old, Jeff
Sarwer was a world champion. Described
by some as the strongest chess prodigy
since Bobby Fischer, Sarwer won the under-10s
division of the inaugural World Youth Chess
Championship in Puerto Rico, before becoming
a media sensation. His phenomenal performances, featuring simultaneous chess games against
multiple opponents, became the centrepiece
of Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill,
Ottawa, in his native Ontario, a scruffy, pint-sized
kid in face paint casually slaying 30 opponents at
once, most several years his senior.
Sarwer became the star of the Manhattan
Chess Club in New York, one of the world’s most
prestigious. He was even hired as a high-pitched
studio commentator on television coverage of the
biggest chess matches of the era. He looked destined for great things, and brashly talked about
a match with Garry Kasparov. But suddenly he
vanished. And the story of what happened to
him became every bit as gripping as the top-level
chess matches he had spent years playing.
Sarwer’s withdrawal from chess was more
unusual, and unsavoury, than just a kid falling
out of love with the game. He was still only 11
when an article in Vanity Fair magazine portrayed
his father, Mike, as a tyrannical child abuser,
physically assaulting his children and a succession of girlfriends, forcing Jeff and his older sister,
Julia, into extreme trials and tortures while denying them basic comforts.
During Jeff’s days as a prodigy, Mike had regularly featured in coverage of his son, appearing
as a freewheeling hippie, home-schooling his
children and living out of a car, unconventional
but harmless. But Vanity Fair said Mike was an
“oppressing Svengali male”, transformed behind
the scenes into a domineering bully. In the aftermath of the story’s publication, Jeff and Julia were
seized by child authorities, Mike was a pariah,
and chess was robbed of its great young hope. No
one would see Jeff Sarwer again. Or so it seemed.
But in mid-2009, 20 years after the last public appearance of the chess prodigy, a Canadian
poker player began appearing regularly at the
tables of the prestigious European Poker Tour,
where competitors pay around €5,000 for a stab
at prize money regularly exceeding €1m. He
had the name Jeff Sarwer embroidered on his
shirt, but none of the established professionals
had met their fresh-faced, confident table-mate.
The new guy seemed to be a complete package
already: he was tricky and unpredictable; he was
disarmingly charming yet ruthlessly aggressive
and he seemed to be able to read opponents’
minds, coaxing them into fundamental blunders
and vacuuming up their chips. In short order, he
won €9,000 at a tournament in Prague, €30,000
in Tallinn, €25,000 in Warsaw, €156,000 in
Vilamoura, Portugal, and €110,000 in Berlin.
This was indeed the same Jeff Sarwer, the adult
24 version of the prodigy who had caused such a stir
THESE PAGES, LEFT, ABOVE AND BELOW: ALEN MACWEENEY. RIGHT: TOMO
PREVIOUS PAGES, LEFT: ALEN MACWEENEY. RIGHT: NEIL STODDART/POKERSTARS.COM.
I
Left: Jeff, then 9, with
his father, Mike. Shaving
their heads was a
‘statement against
vanity’ according to
Mike, who was a manicdepressive. Right: today
Jeff says that although
he felt ‘abused and
frightened’ by Mike, his
methods of grooming
him as a prodigy were
brutally effective
in the chess world of the 1980s. Now 32, Sarwer
has recently ended two decades of isolation, living under assumed identities across the world,
escaping foster homes in daring midnight breakouts, evading the media, who he felt has betrayed
him, and finally shaking the negative influence
of a father who forced him to retire from chess
before his career had even begun.
Sarwer has finally reconciled the torments of
his past and fortified himself against a new, inevitable barrage of press attention. He is currently
writing his own biopic with the Bafta-nominated
British director Gordon Anderson, who directed
The Inbetweeners and worked with Catherine
Tate. The film will detail his life as a “welfare
prodigy” on the run with a manic-depressive
father. Only now is Sarwer ready to reveal the
truths and distortions of his remarkable former
life, including the methods of a father that were
by turns shocking yet brutally effective. “I was
abused and terrified,” Sarwer said in his home in
Gdansk, Poland, where he has lived for the past
four years. “But I don’t want to be a victim, so
I’m going to be honest and say that if I was just
abused randomly, in some random way, I don’t
think I would have had any success at things. But
I was abused by a guy who was incredibly bright
and who was sick enough that he knew that in the
end I’m going to be thankful no matter what.”
On the surface, the young Sarwer did not have
much to be thankful for. Born in 1978 in Kingston,
Ontario, he and his sister Julia were separated
from a mother struggling to care for them in addition to four boys from a previous relationship. Jeff
and Julia’s father, a former concert violinist, who
occasionally taught musical prodigies, took sole
custody of the children and began, in Jeff’s words,
a “social experiment” in producing child geniuses
who could excel in any field. Railing against the
system, Mike Sarwer withdrew his children from
Feature
school (turning Jeff into a “kindergarten dropout”, a phrase beloved of the press that followed
his chess career), and sought to foster an environment of intense concentration, focus and obedience, whereby he believed children would learn
more effectively. “He was a weird cross between
a scientific mathematical violinist and rebellious
Sarwer. “In attitude, in actions, in anything at all.”
Mike Sarwer had been imprisoned for 10 days
in 1983 for contempt of court, refusing to present
Jeff to social services after a teacher reportedly
noticed unusual bruising. But the trio latterly
developed contingency plans for if they were
similarly separated, or if the children were seized.
THINGS REMAINED SOUR IN THE SARWER HOUSEHOLD.
BEATINGS CONTINUED AWAY FROM THE CAMERAS
AND JEFF WAS PROHIBITED ACCESS TO THE TOP TUTORS
hippie,” said Jeff. But he was also inventing a philosophy as he went along. Any misstep or perceived duplicity was punished with a blow to the
head, and though the children were encouraged
to rebel against authority figures, their father’s
word was inviolable. “It was a world where there
was no tolerance for any mistakes at all,” said
Jeff and Julia would go on hunger strike at foster
homes, insisting they return to their father, and
Mike would seek them out, issuing a wolf howl
late at night that the children would follow. “It
was training,” Sarwer said. “[He was] teaching his
kids to rebel, that they are not a part of society.
The real society is the three of us, my dad, Julia
and me, and this was our own culture and we
should do whatever it takes in order to survive.”
In the long hours he spent in the back of the
car, or sitting alone in rudimentary flats cluttered
with junk, Jeff had taken to chess. After learning
the basics from Julia, he immediately found a
freedom in the ability to create complex patterns
that not even his father could follow. “I played
myself, all day. The white and black sides of the
game. That was my escape. This was something
a little more like control, unlike the world around
me that was just crazy education and discipline.”
On a road trip passing through New Orleans,
Jeff invited himself into a game being played for
money by some chess hustlers in a McDonald’s.
It was one of the first times he had ever played
against another person, but the child appeared to
have a sophisticated understanding of the game’s
moves and subtleties. One of his opponents recommended Jeff to the Manhattan Chess Club,
which used to assemble in Carnegie Hall and
was the meeting place of the country’s top grandmasters. On their next visit to New York, both Jeff
and Julia immediately dazzled there too and were
offered free membership, and coaching from
the club’s director, Bruce Pandolfini. The family moved to a run-down apartment in Brooklyn,
from where they would commute uptown, ducking under subway barriers, to play all day.
The world of children’s chess is one of intense
competition, of pushy parents expecting miracles
from their gifted offspring. But the Sarwers were
obvious outcasts in this middle-class environment, and Jeff rapidly became the enfant terrible.
They lived in the car, appearing unwashed and
with bare feet, apparently malnourished.
Mike was the opposite of a pushy chess parent.
Although he had groomed Jeff to be a prodigy,
he had not chosen chess as the particular field in
which he should shine and did not approve of Jeff
receiving professional tuition. “I got better at that
game than my dad could have imagined. That’s
why he became jealous as soon as other people
wanted to train me… He trained me for all those
years with fundamental core training. Is he going
to let some chess coach take credit after training
me for a year and seeing me destroy everything?”
Mike allowed his son to compete in the first
World Youth Championships, and Jeff duly beat
what was, by modern standards, a small and
weak field. Nonetheless, he was an official world
champion and the mainstream media prepared
to embrace the new Bobby Fischer. It also should
have been a crucial period in the developmental transition of a young chess star, yet things
remained sour in the Sarwer household. Beatings
continued away from the cameras, and Jeff was
prohibited access to the top tutors. He was also
frequently denied the chance to play sufficient
matches against stiff competition to advance his
own game. The family still conducted frequent
road trips, where Jeff’s only opponents were himself, puzzle books, or a primitive chess com- a
25
Feature
Right: Jeff with Julia,
who is said to have also
been abused by Mike
T
he last straw was the Vanity Fair article, which turned the Sarwers’ life on
its head again, and remains a source of
deep enmity for Jeff and Julia. The 14-page story,
by John Colapinto, ran in the November 1989 edition of Vanity Fair under a picture of Mike and a
nine-year-old Jeff, naked from the waist up, their
heads shaven. The shaving was part of an annual
“statement against vanity”, said the article, but
this ritual was among the least extreme allegations made against Mike Sarwer during a meticulous exposé. Quoting from a former girlfriend,
Lisa Kelly, Mike is presented as a despot who
regularly beat her, holding a knife to her throat,
whipping her with a belt, making her eat scraps
from bins, forcing Jeff and his sister Julia to watch.
The article also alleges similar abuses meted out
against Mike’s former wife (Jeff’s mother) and the
children themselves, including “drownings” of
Julia, where her head was held underwater.
Jeff Sarwer says now that the piece was “completely exaggerated”. However, three lawsuits
were brought by each of the Sarwers in the 1990s,
all dismissed. Only Julia’s suit attracted much
press attention at the time: it focused on what she
described as the ruination of her childhood and
the subsequent need to assume a false identity.
Jeff Sarwer is now the only person prepared
to talk frankly about the era. Julia refuses to say
anything about her upbringing and Mike Sarwer
has disappeared. Jeff says he last saw his father
10 years ago in Montreal and admitted: “There’s
a very good chance he’s not around with us any
more. He wasn’t afraid of death, that’s for sure.”
Jeff confirmed his Spartan upbringing, describing sitting on the floor of grimy apartments eating
boiled chicken, and said that for many years he
lived in fear of reprisals from his temperamental
father. His anecdotes from the period, many of
which he intends to recreate in his film, portray
Mike as an authoritarian engaging in an unortho-
dox psychological schooling of his children, reinforced by violence should they fail to learn. Jeff
remembers watching from a harbour-side as his
father drove a car off a pier and into a lake, apparently drowning himself. The demonstration was
meant to teach the children about mortality. Mike
wriggled out of the car at the last moment and
returned to caution the terrified Jeff and Julia that
he might not always be there. He also recalls one
Halloween when Mike designed a route round
the Brooklyn streets to maximise trick-or-treat
returns. The children were equipped with a bag
for their non-existent “sick sister” and procured
sweets to last them for a year.
However, Jeff also remains intent on not being
seen as a victim. At the time the children feared
the social services far more than their home life
and even now Sarwer blames Colapinto far more
than his own father for the break-up of the family. The Vanity Fair article prompted authorities,
already suspicious of Mike, to take Jeff and Julia
into care again. They were transported under
JEFF REMEMBERS WATCHING FROM A HARBOUR-SIDE AS
MIKE DROVE A CAR OFF A PIER AND INTO A LAKE,
APPARENTLY DROWNING HIMSELF, TO TEACH THEM ABOUT MORTALITY
guard to a hotel in Ottawa, where they lived for
several weeks, seeing their father only in court.
But their loyalty was undiminished. “My sister
and I said, ‘To hell with this, let’s escape,’” said
Jeff. “We were tricky, Julia and I.” The children,
then 11 and 13, waited for their guard to fall
asleep, tip-toed out of the hotel, and took a taxi
to one of their father’s hippie friends, who drove
them to the Quebec border — and into a new life.
Though the Canadian police initially searched
for the missing children, and Mike regularly
appeared at the office “demanding” they be
found, the case was eventually dropped and the
three were reunited. They lived together first in
Montreal and eventually in Holland, where Jeff
and Julia became known as Ray and Crystal.
Mike’s control waned as the children grew older;
after they moved back to Montreal, he slipped
into depression. “The unit disintegrated naturally,” said Jeff. “By the time I was in my teens it was
becoming more of a farce, and he realised it.”
The world of high-stakes tournament poker
to the older, pre-internet generation of players.
In the down time from the tournament in Berlin,
he caught up with friends from his travelling days,
or worked on his film with Anderson. A fortnight
later, he was in Austria for another poker tournament, hanging out in the bars with the sharpest
young poker minds, many more than 10 years his
junior. He is spending this summer in Las Vegas,
making his debut at the World Series of Poker,
the game’s most celebrated tournament series.
In Austria, Sarwer also appeared as an expert
summariser on the internet broadcast of the
poker, as well as in light-hearted videos filmed
by the tournament’s sponsor. He had, belatedly,
found another niche and was back at the centre of attention. “If I’d had no success in poker
or business, all I’d be is a chess prodigy who’s
pretty happy with himself,” he said. “I’m proud
of the fact that I succeeded and wasn’t supposed
to. A lot of people thought I had no chance as
an adult. That has motivated me in a very strong
way because I wanted to prove people wrong.” s 27
ALEN MACWEENEY
puter he had long since learned how to crush.
The British grandmaster Nigel Short, himself
a chess prodigy who received no formal coaching until he was an adult, said that there is insufficient recorded evidence to determine Sarwer’s
real potential as a chess player. However he also
said the lack of parental cooperation is certain
to snuff out a youngster’s chance at the big time.
“Because a 10-year-old cannot enter tournaments for himself, so it’s finished if your parents
don’t support you or give you the opportunity.”
Sarwer continued to appear at some chess
events, but did not defend his world title in 1987.
By the time a friend of his father’s obtained corporate sponsorship for a trip to the 1988 World
Youth Championships in Romania, Jeff says that
he was already essentially retired.
is far removed from the cliched images of shady
games in dank lockups: tournaments take place
in hotel function suites or vast casino premises,
and the most successful players are often young
mathematics whizzes with a perfect assessment
of odds and risk. Millions of dollars change hands
daily on the internet, where players can find limitless games and play several at once. Psychology,
however, remains a key element to the live game:
pulling off bluffs is integral, and a player acutely
attuned to others’ states of mind, as Sarwer is, is
at a distinct advantage. He says he frequently tailored his chess game to exploit weaknesses he
saw in uncomfortable opponents, but the rewards
of psychological dominance in poker are more
pronounced, immediate and profitable.
Earlier this year I accompanied Sarwer on
a tour of Gdansk, viewing a property development of 140 residential units he has financed
and partly designed; then taking a 10-hour train
journey to the poker tournament in Berlin, where
he picked up the second six-figure score of his
new career. He travelled light for this commute
and walked into Berlin’s Ritz Carlton hotel carrying a small black holdall containing few clothes,
some cash, and a poker strategy book. Nothing
about Sarwer these days hints at the torments of
his past. He is an athletic and well-dressed, confident and gregarious in company, and popular
among the ex-pat community in Gdansk. He has
close friends and business associates in Poland
and was also quickly accepted into the tight-knit
poker circles, where the top young players spend
hours discussing strategy in a unique technical
language that can sometimes seem impenetrable