I played chess on the internet at lunchtime against some anonymous person somewhere else in the world. I would love to tell you who they were, and where they were from, but alas I cannot - I will never know more about them than their username. I requested a game, the board came to life, and my clock started ticking down.
It was all a rather topsy turvy afair for most of the game - no doubt a product of me not having played properly for several years, and the opponent probably being a casual player. Once upon a time I read books about chess - I studied the game and it’s luminaries from centuries past. Morphy, Steinitz, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, and Kasparov.
The foundation of what I should be doing is still there at a high level… ideas such as pawn structure, active pieces, control of diagonals, and so on still come to mind while looking at the board, but they only really come into play if you don’t leave pieces hanging left right and centre. As is usual, I rolled into the game in somewhat confident manner and set about throwing cheap tricks in front of the opponent. None of these worked, and I ended up retreating and sacrificing material to get the hell out.
The whiff of failure caused some extra part of my brain to come online, and I began marshalling my remaining forces.
The opponent didn’t see the attack coming… it was horrific. If he had been afforded one extra move, his Queen would have wrought all kinds of destruction upon me - but that’s the thing about Chess - you never get that “one extra move”. Even he was impressed when the checkmate arrived out of nowhere, and congratulated me on a fine sequence of moves.
Of course I would like to claim that the entire attack was planned. It was not. Each move unfolded more though the pieces happening to be nearby than any spectacular strategy on my part. I guess I shouldn’t be telling you that though. Rather I should be striking fear into your heart less you ever sit on the opposite side of a chess board from me…