Mar 27, 2026
Author's Commentary #39:
Time to talk about Chapter 39: A new era of chess.
Originally, the whole point of this chapter was to highlight everyone's new ratings. While this is still largely the case with the revisions, I've now decided to introduce a character in this chapter that won't appear again until much later in the story, but will have an important role in it. I'm of course referring to Noa Ben-Horin, Maccabee's daughter.
ノア・ベン・ホリン (Noa Ben-Horin) is how her name would be spelled in katakana. נועה בן-חורין (Noa Ben-Horin) is how her name would be spelled in Hebrew. Her first name would be spelled as 希愛 in kanji and means "hope" and "to love".
(If I made any mistakes with the translations, feel free to correct me).
Her birthday is July 1st, as it could be considered the half-way point in the year.
Her favorite piece is the knight, mainly because it's her father's favorite piece.
Noa was born in Los Angeles to a Japanese mother and Jewish father, Maccabee, and quickly discovered her talent for chess at a young age. One fun fact about her is that she's fluent in English, Japanese, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, and Ladino, Judeo-Spanish. As LA has a large Spanish-speaking population, Noa naturally decided to pick up Spanish, and in the process, heard Ladino was a thing, so she decided to learn it too. While she's only making a brief cameo here, I promise that when she returns, she will not only have a big role in the series, but also just might be someone that can go toe-to-toe with Mimoko on the chessboard.
Now with that out of the way, I'll briefly list all the ratings changes before we discuss them. Okisato: 2434 to 2525, Yuusuke: 1478 to 1530, Iori: 400 to 1144, Utami: unrated to 1001, Maida: unrated to 1354, Numakawa: unrated to 900, Rodeo: unrated to 250, Yuzuha: unrated to 350, and finally Mimoko: unrated to 2700. Nyoan's rating also increased from 900 to 999.
First let's talk about Iori's new rating as there's some significance behind it. As some of you might know, 4 is an unlucky number in Japan due to it's association with death. And since Iori is an ex-murderer, her having an affinity for the number 4 makes sense. This is also why I deliberately chose to have her have 4 million subscribers.
Now onto Mimoko. Her breaking 2700 is both a testament to her skill and a nod to Judit Polgár, the first female chess player to achieve a rating over 2700. With her high rating, Mimoko is now rated higher than most of the Desperado league's members. Not to mention, even the ones rated higher than her would likely be unable to soundly beat her. Much like Gyro feared, Mimoko is now the new shining star of the chess world.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
