A/N: Written for tygermama's prompt "Sherlock discovers there's something that Molly is incredibly better than him at. He's torn between pissy and impressed." Forgive any mistakes on the chess front, I'm no expert there.
"Knight to E5"
Molly ignored the dare of his, quickly jumping an irrelevant pawn forward before going back to reading her new pathology journal. This, their third game; she'd consumed 1/4 of the articles already in the time it had taken. Which hadn't been long at all.
She'd beaten him twice; didn't appear to study the board, glanced peripherally for a second before making her choice – annoyingly it didn't give him a chance to work out her strategy, advantage to her. Nor were they turning out to be wrong as they should be a reasonable percentage of the time if she was rushing herself, hasty decisions ought to have failed her overall. He didn't know how she was doing it. What was her plan?
"Mycroft talked to you."
"Yes..."
"I knew it-"
"He told me to check your pockets when you leave the lab."
"He didn't for example tell you my play styles, my supposed 'tells'."
"Why would Mycroft mention that?" she asked puzzled, looking directly at him, no sign of artifice in her features.
"Besides, there's no satisfaction if it isn't a challenge."
Her bishop came out of nowhere for the kill. Unlike him, she didn't appear very challenged currently.
If there was one thing that would make up for this...
"I think a Holmes/Holmes/Hooper tournament would be best."