"Patience flies higher than the wind."
Age 80 | Almaty traditional falconer
"Patience flies higher than the wind."
Savage
HunterSavage
Guardian
Observer
Mediator
Welcome, traveller. Sit by the fire. I am Yerlan, an old falconer from the steppe outside Almaty, and I play this game the way I hunt, slowly, with patience. My young eagles are not clever, but they fly when called. The steppe is wide. Let us begin.
Yerlan Bekmuratov is an 80-year-old traditional falconer from Almaty, Kazakhstan, who has trained golden eagles on the steppe at the foot of the Tian Shan mountains for more than sixty years. He came to chess late and only as a quiet pastime, playing a few games by the yurt fire on still evenings rather than studying the board with any seriousness. His estimated rating of 437 places him at the absolute beginner level: he knows how the pieces move and understands basic captures, but he frequently leaves pieces undefended and misses simple threats from one move to the next. He has no opening repertoire on file and treats each game like a slow, patient walk across open country rather than a prepared line of theory. Visitors facing Yerlan should expect a calm, unhurried opponent who will offer plenty of tactical chances and overlook many of his own.
Yerlan plays with a sharply aggressive hand for someone of his rating, pushing his pieces forward and keeping the position tangled rather than trading down into quiet endings. He avoids simplifications and lets the tension build across the board. He has no fixed opening preference and chooses moves by feel rather than theory, balanced evenly between solid and sharp lines depending on the mood of the evening.
Yerlan is a friendly match for true beginners and casual players rated roughly 200 to 600, especially anyone still learning to spot hanging pieces and basic tactics. Because he pushes forward and keeps the position complicated rather than trading down, players who want practice converting a material advantage and defending against unprepared attacks will get steady, low-pressure repetitions against him without facing any opening theory.
