The chessboard before me is full, and my mind, it so happens, is suddenly a blank.

"My, these are nice-looking pieces," I think to myself in a daze, scanning the dignified Nordic figures in this replica of the famous "Lewis chessmen" set from the Middle Ages. My pieces have their backs turned to me and they're ready to enter the breach at my command. Now if I can only pull my thoughts together and put these little warriors in the right squares.

My opponent makes her first move. Here we go -- time to kiss my kingdom goodbye.

On the opposite side of the board is Marilyn Yalom, the author of "Birth of the Chess Queen: A History" (HarperCollins, $24.95). The book explores the rise of the game's queen vis-a-vis the rise of real queens in Europe. Yalom says she doesn't play the game well, but surely she must be understating her prowess: She's a senior scholar at Stanford's Institute for Women and Gender who just wrote an entire book on chess. My knowledge of the game, on the other hand, never progressed much beyond childhood "matches" on the beach, when all it took to put an end to a game was the arrival of another game -- any other game.

But there was no getting out of this match today. A challenge was laid down (silly me), and e-mail and phone calls were exchanged. As with war, once the plans have been drawn up, there is no easy way to back down. This battle was going to be waged.

Gosh, this ancient game of strategy is rather bellicose and manly. In fact, Yalom explains in her engrossing and enlightening book, chess had an all- male board for five centuries. When it was first played, in India and the Arab world, a vizier (a king's chief adviser) stood next to the king. But over time, something happened: Except for Muslim countries, where the vizier is still in play, the queen overtook the king's right-hand man.

Yalom, 72, stumbled upon this bit of knowledge six years ago and was intrigued. Many historians have written about the game's evolution, she says, "but they're not asking the questions that I'm asking." Namely, what outside forces helped put a woman on the board, then made her the most powerful piece in the game?

Before tackling a book on the subject, Yalom, a sprightly woman with a quick wit, wrote about the chess queen in an article she titled "Sex Change on the Board." "I thought, 'That's a jazzy title -- who wouldn't want to read that?' " she recalls with a laugh. There were no takers. "So when you can't publish an article," she quips, "you write a book."

In her research, Yalom found that more women used to play the game. "The fact that women dropped out as players -- that's sad," she says. Today, women make up only 5 percent of chess players in the world. There used to be more parity in the pastime, she concludes, because the game was longer and thus, she writes, "suited to leisurely encounters between ladies and gentlemen that could last a day or more. ..."

Ironically, Yalom writes, this changed in late-15th century Spain, during the strong reign of Isabella of Castile, with the arrival of the "fast and fierce" game we know today, so-called new chess: The queen, once the weakest piece (moving only a square at a time on the diagonal), was transformed into the most dominant piece.

All of this becomes painfully obvious to me as, just a few moves into our game, I notice that Yalom is clutching my dear regina, having plunked her rook into my sovereign's square. Holy mother of God! How did that happen? It happened, it turns out, because I mistook Yalom's rook for a bishop. For some reason, I was focusing on the old chessmen's quirky headgear and not, more importantly, on their bases, which feature such telltale details as that castle thingy. No, medieval Nordic artists were perhaps not the best at rendering the human form, but the expression on my queen's face seems appropriate for the occasion: She looks aghast, both shocked by my stupidity and horrified to be sidelined.

My foe generously offers me the chance to replay my bone-headed move, but I refuse, my fragile manhood at stake. Besides, is there such a thing as a mulligan in chess?

Things could be worse. I could be playing with pieces that have no figures on them, only harder-to-recognize abstract representations. In her book, Yalom describes how ancient chessmen were like this so as not to violate a ban on "idols." The game is still played this way in the Muslim world, except for Turkey.

Oh, my turn? I must be daydreaming again, getting lost looking out the big back window of Yalom's spacious house, taking in the soothing sounds of a nearby rooster. Amazing that one can be in Palo Alto, not far from Stanford, and still hear farm animals.

I turn my attention back to the board, an imposing chunk of bronze that Yalom and her husband, Irvin, a psychiatrist and writer, bought years ago on a visit to Greece. Again, I take my knight for a ride. Why not? The horse is irresistibly cute, and let's face it, only he can make that nifty right-angle sashay.

It seems Yalom doesn't like what she sees. "OK, OK, OK," she says thoughtfully, tapping the board with her fingernails. As she mulls over her next move, my eyes are drawn to the intimidating wall of books behind her, several of them hers, including "A History of the Wife" and "A History of the Breast." A few titles by Vladimir Nabokov, that great lover of chess, also stare down at me. Keep it cool, I think. What did that Russian polymath know anyway?

Yalom hesitates, then slides her bishop across the board. "Oh, shoot! What am I doing!" she exclaims, making it known that I am now (I guess) in a good position to mount an attack on the enemy. I glance at this stern-looking individual -- a rook, right? -- and convince myself that he looks as if he could do some damage. I drag him across the board. What do you know? Her queen is in danger.

"That guy, I don't like him," Yalom says, pointing to my side of the board. She backs up the only female piece left on the board. My hairy paw, apparently taking directions from the monkey brain it's linked to, descends on a bishop and puts him in the square occupied by the queen.

A big sigh from across the board: "To lose my queen -- that's pretty pathetic."

My opponent reminds me she's not that good a player. Her husband's a strong player, she says, but she doesn't even enjoy the game. "I don't, I really don't," she says with a laugh. "It is a game that calls for a kind of concentration, not to say obsession, that I don't have."

I begin to believe her when I notice that in the dark recesses of one of the chessmen, a spider has made a home for itself, its webbing visible upon close inspection. And when I move my other rook, his head comes with me but the rest of him stays behind. Something tells me this board hasn't seen a lot of action lately.

What happens next is a blur. Some skirmishes unfold, the board grows more bare, and before I know it, we've arrived at what must be the endgame. I know this because Yalom speaks up: "I'm in big trouble."

I hear myself mutter "checkmate," and her king goes down. I'm filled with a sudden sense of dread, sloppy and cruel killer of queen and king that I am. My host graciously extends her arm for a handshake and gives me a polite smile. Is she thinking what I'm thinking? Rematch?