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Unpopular Ideas

Ramblings and Digressions from out of left field, and beyond....

Name:
Location: Piedmont of Virginia, United States

All human history, and just about everything else as well, consists of a never-ending struggle against ignorance.

Monday, July 19, 2004

Chess for Blood

       When I was a child and  teenager, quite frankly I was "slow,"  in several important respects.  But my private god (more about that elsewhere  ...maybe) allowed that to be concealed by several clever strategies,  though I didn't realize it at the time.    One was that I became seriously interested in trying to become a chessmaster. 
       In line with my delay in most things, at age 16 I came to chess too late.    You should start by 9 or 10 to have a good crack at fulfilling any serious ambitions.    So, while most guys my age were becoming ever more absorbed in cars and girls,  I spent the remainder of my coming-of-age years loading my memory with many intricate sequences of opening moves.    I didn't regret falling so far behind my contemporaries, as I figured -- I think correctly -- that those more normal obsessions would quickly saddle them with big burdens of bills,  babies,  and responsibilities that I felt I could do without for a while longer.  
       I was a good chess player.   For a short while I held the U.S. Chess Federation rank of Expert, a few points below Master.   But I was saddled with a disastrous flaw --  a lack of the killer instinct.   I could often get winning positions but I had trouble cashing them in.
       But  that was all just as well. 
       There are two kinds of chess,  as Edward Lasker,  the unrelated namesake of the great Emanuel Lasker (a chess giant throughout the first third of the past century) pointed out with the title of his excellent book,  "Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood." 
      Chess for fun is played by uncommitted people using those ornate and unusable Florentine pieces that you see in movies and living rooms.    Women, the more sensible sex,  tend to confine themselves to that kind of chess. 
       People unacquainted with the other kind, chess for blood,  can have no idea of just how exciting yet stressful the game can get,  once you know what is happening.   It is much like prizefighting, except that you are trying to batter an opponent's cranium from the inside instead of the outside.   But chess, in its strategies and in its tactics, is also accompanied by enormous beauty that so far I have been unable to detect in boxing and in nearly all other competitive pursuits as well.
       I'm not saying, however, that chess for blood is good for one's health.   One reason is that it is overseen by something diabolic called a CLOCK,  and in any sort of a close game it's difficult to avoid getting into a terrible fix called TIME TROUBLE.    And in the meantime you and your opponent are trying to deal heavy blows to something  nearly as delicate and as crucial as the heart or the brain -- the other person's PYSCHE -- and that in turn is corrosive to  your STOMACH -- if you're as much of a purist as I was and take it far too seriously. 
        But that was years ago and now I live where there aren't any chess-for-blood players for many miles around,  and I've been SAVED ...mostly, you have by now deduced,  from myself.

3 Comments:

Blogger andante said...

Better get yourself over to NTodd - he needs all the help he can get!

Having played duplicate bridge for blood, I can sympathize. Life is too short....you have to be a total addict to compete like that.

5:08 PM  
Blogger Rook said...

It's too late. NTodd is dead meat. I've already preplanned the blood bath he will soon be experiencing.

Mwaaahahahahahahahaha!

10:46 PM  
Blogger Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) said...

I fear that Rook is right. The way I see it, good ol' Todd's been struggling through some very deep snows in that game since last winter. Ha!

11:09 PM  

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