1979 to 1982 US paperback about Army in West Germany

[uk 75]

Trying a real long shot here. Back in 1982 I picked up a US published paperback novel with a black cover featuring a chessboard in gold and silver with US and Soviet military as pieces. The story begins with an American officer playing chess with a female West Germ officer during a standard exercise in Germany but then gets into a Soviet invasion. I lost the book some years ago and have tried to remember the title as it was an interesting take on the pre Reagan USAREUR.
Would be good to find it.

 

[uk 75]

Trying a real long shot here. Back in 1982 I picked up a US published paperback novel with a black cover featuring a chessboard in gold and silver with US and Soviet military as pieces. The story begins with an American officer playing chess with a female West Germ officer during a standard exercise in Germany but then gets into a Soviet invasion. I lost the book some years ago and have tried to remember the title as it was an interesting take on the pre Reagan USAREUR.
Would be good to find it.

Still had no luck finding my copy of this. But I still remember it being a good pre Tom Clancy et al read

 

[Graham1973]

Good luck, the period between the end of WWII and the 1990s is what I sometimes term the 'Black Gap', there were a huge number of action based paperbacks released and vanishingly few of them were reprinted, especially from the low end publishers.

Have you considered registering with Goodreads? They have several forums dedicated to locating titles based on plot summaries.