My Life in Sport - Chess

 

 At the weekend it may have been a daft thing to do to take the rook. I think I should have promoted the pawn. Surely I have chances of winning from there, if only when her time runs out, or at least a draw. I think it wins. I have 17.28 on my clock and she has less than two minutes. So I lost but never mind. She promotes the d pawn and captures the rook. Sometimes, when players register in their real name rather than a nom de guerre, you can find out who they are and it looks like this player took part in the Azerbaijan Youth Championships in 2017 so she's probably not bad. That's a mighty long way from the Gloucester Primary Schools Chess Congress of 1970 where, in my first game, I was beaten by the traditional 4-move Fool's Mate having never seen such a devious trick before.

But I learnt quickly over those three days, including drawing by stalemate when I greedily promoted three pawns to Queen and left my opponent with nowhere to move without being in check where he was. I've since retrieved various lost positions by playing on and successfully tempting others to do that to me. But I gained 5 and a half points out of eight which put me on a lower board for the Gloucester v. Bristol match which involved a coach trip to Bristol and a win and a draw from two games there.

Some of subsequent summer holidays were spent playing through old games from books borrowed from the library, my favourite being Jose Capablanca, a stylish virtuoso from Cuba who was World Champion from 1921-27.

The paranoia and madness of Fischer-Spassky in Reyjavik in 1972 was compelling without necssarily understanding the significance of every move which has since made me wonder how much the spectators of any other sport really understand what's going on out there. Although it seems to me that surely, eventually, all possible chess games will have been played, Garry Kasparov has assured us that there are more possible chess positions than there are stars in the universe, and that is unimaginably beyond being unimaginable if he's right so we need not worry yet. But, what with the moon landings, Concorde and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, there was enough on the News to keep a boy interested and, alongside the spatial, strategic and tactical elements of chess itself, it added to the mystique of all things Russian.

There wasn't such a thing as a lower school chess team but a match was arranged with another school in which I played board 4 out of 6 and drew before it transpired that they had switched their order around in the hope of stealing a couple of points and maybe I'd played one that they had hoped to win with.

For years it remained a sporadic thing, playing one afternoon in Eastbourne Chess Club, in Glasgow and for a three-man team in a little league we arranged in Southampton where I kept the cup provided having won 9 out of 9.

However, in the 1990's the opportunity presented itself to play in the regional heats of the Civil Service tournament, in Winchester and why not. Because such tournaments are designed to provide the right winner and so no-hopers get drawn against proper players before getting a chance to play other beaten players, where I scraped a draw in the first year. I think they call it a Swiss tournament. But the following year I won in the third round and was invited to go to London a couple of times to represent the Civil Service, a representative match not meaning it was the best teams available but one catering for all levels. My 100% record playing chess for the Civil Service consisted of a walk-over v. the RAF when their board 14, out of 16, was the only player who didn't turn up. And then, the next year, not wanting to go all the way to London and back to get beaten, I volunteered to play on board 16 and played an elderly man who forgot to use the clock so I was playing in his time for several moves and he conceded what was becoming a lost position for him in 'time trouble'.

I did play against machines but that isn't satisfactory at all. The availability of chess on the internet was a wonderful thing on various websites, against real people in other times zones, most recently at Chess24 and Lichess.

I was introduced to Lichess by my mate out in Malaga who saw that the annual tornament there was being held online during lockdown and I did okay during two hours of high pressure thinking one Sunday afternoon. I've lodged my ratings for 5 and 10 minute games above the 1900, as they are at Chess24 and, not wanting to risk them, now play 30-minute games and float between 1800-1860, not knowing most of the time who it is I'm playing but thinking they're not bad, being on the fringe of the top 10% who have taken the trouble to register, that maybe I'd survive okay over the board in the local league Division 2, for somebody's B team. It's the only competitive sport I still play. And it is competitive because you are drawn against players of a similar rating. Never mind all that running about, fitness, hand and eye co-ordination and athletic prowess, chess might be the game I was best at. It certainly lasted me the longest.