She flung off her bright pink schoolbag emblazoned in red pen with “C-A-R-O-L-I-N-A” and greeted me with a curtsy and gap-toothed smile — but I knew what she was up to as soon as she gripped my hand with a steely handshake.
“It’s the rules to shake hands,” she said, her brown eyes locking mine, expectantly.
That grip and those eyes had me on the back foot from the start. I confessed to Carolina Espinosa Cancino, one of the rising stars of the game, that she would not only have to remind me of match etiquette, but also how to play.
I should come clean: Carolina is six years old and just 3ft 6in. But she does have a fierce game — and fighting talk. As we settled down for a match yesterday in the library of her Sacred Heart primary school, in Girvan, overlooking the picturesque South Ayrshire coast, I tried to break the ice with a joke: “Do you think you have any chance of beating me?”
Her eyes narrowed. She sized me up, bit her lip and said, ever so seriously: “No, I don’t think you will beat me. Because I’m good at playing.”
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She may be confident but she has good reason to be.
Carolina is the first-ranked girl in the Grade Rise category among all Scottish active chess players aged five to 18.
Next week she will compete for the Scottish Girls Championship for girls aged 18 and under.
Naturally, as a self-confessed Scrabble fan who had been out of the chess circuit for years, I was nervous.
When she is not singing the Let It Go soundtrack to the Disney film, Frozen, or reciting her nine-times table, Carolina practises chess twice a day after school.
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Equipped with insider knowledge of my opponent, I spent the morning typing “chess tips” into Google and receiving an ego-bashing from its autocomplete function as “for beginners” and “for novices” popped up.
Eventually my search history grew until it included “how to lose to a much better player while looking like you’re trying” and, regrettably, “chess cheating tactics”.
As Carolina assembled pieces on the board, overlooked by her mother, Cristina, 49, and father, Jose, 53, she said: “I just think about winning and I also think about my moves to play.”
The moves she played in the following 12 minutes were painful — for me.
Once we clarified that because this was not a “proper” match, and my incessant questioning would be permitted to permeate the usual silence that dominates her play, she could not stop talking. Although, it was the always same words. “You can’t do that!” “Touch move!” “Adjust!” “Check!” “Check!” “Check!”
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My pieces were suddenly triumphantly lined up in a neat row next to her. Three of hers were next to me.
“Oooh, I know,” she whispered, as she had me cornered. “I’m going to do it with the queen.” At least I knew how I would meet my end.
“If you were me now, could you see how to win?” I asked, increasingly exasperated. “Mmm, I know a move,” she said. “But I’m not helping you.”
As her bishop slid menacingly towards my king, I thought I should at least protect my royal pieces. I picked up my king, but changed my mind and went for a pawn. “Touch move!”
Who knew if you touch a piece you are committed to playing it?
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She eventually cornered my pitiful king and took it with her queen, as promised. “I’m the queen now,” she sang, performing a seated victory dance.
Despite her excitement at such an easy victory, she is an ambitious, humble winner in the professional circuit.
“If I lose, I don’t cry,” she said. “I just want to be a master champion.”
Her idol is Judit Polgár, the Hungarian chess grandmaster. “Don’t you know who she is?” she asked when I asked who he was. “I want to be more famous than her.”
Last month Carolina won the 2016 Scottish Junior Chess Tournament, competing in the under-nine category. In comparison to my pitiful 12 minutes, she played for five hours to take the title.
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Just over a week later, she scooped another Scottish junior title.
Carolina may dominate the chess board, but was foolish enough to accept my challenge of Scrabble. We’ll see who’s victory dancing then.