Pointless chess nostalgia

I participated in a chess tournament this weekend, on Saturday. I wasn't expecting much out of myself since I haven't played chess since High School. Back then Dan and I would play every day at lunch. We would take our hamburger and fries and sneak them into the library, set up a board, and play the entire lunch period. If lunch ended before the game did, whoever was down would usually admit defeat; if we were evenly matched we would call it a draw; and then, every so often, neither of us would admit defeat and so we play until we were late for class and it became a game of Chicken more than chess.

Dan was always the better player. He read chess books and studied openers, plus he was always a much more deliberate and calculating player than I was. I on the other hand would rely on pawn obstinacy and rash, slashing moves. Even so, we were close to even over-all: Dan might beat me four or five days in a row, followed by a four or five day winning streak on my part ... but I'd guess that, over all the years we played, Dan had the upper hand.

One more pointless chess story.

When I was in the Middle East I met a guy at some Arabic ruins. It turned out he was a chess player and had once been ranked 3rd nationally for Syria. He started visiting and playing me in chess nad, of course, would wipe the table with me every time. Then he got cocky and started playing three of us at a time with "No look" chess (where we could see the board and he would play with his back to it, calling out his moves). I once snuck a pawn into the backfield and was up a queen for a turn or two. The guy was livid but then figured out a way to steal her back by putting my king in danger and forcing me to exchange her for him. When it comes down to it, I still lost to the guy (and would never have been able to sneak the pawn in if he had been looking at the board), but I can still be happy that I ticked off a master chess player.

With all that said, I still feel I'm a decent player when I'm on top of my game. I did pretty well in the tournament but could see from the start that I wouldn't be winning any trophies: one of the players used to teach chess in New York. Worse, he was one of the mouthiest players I've ever heard, talking himself up the entire time and putting his opponents down. In my mind I started imagining myself somehow beating this guy and shutting him up ... but I knew that it was probably not meant to be. I ended up losing to a guy the round before I'd have to play the loud mouth, so I never got to test my mettle against him. Probably for the better: how much worse it would have been to be eliminated from the tournament by that guy.

As it was, I think I had it in me to win another game or two. When I face a new opponent, I try and come out cautious and conservative--so I started off with king pawn to D4. My opponent was playing very aggressively and took his queen out almost immediately ... which made me nervous. But as we played the game out I realized that I was better than him and it was just a matter of time before he made a mistake. He did, losing a knight. Then I traded him my knight for his rook. All I had to do was seal the deal. Instead, I lose a bishop out of stupidity ... and then later my rook for the same reason. So suddenly we were even, though I still had positional advantage. After that my mind was no longer in the game and -- instead of a draw -- I lost to the guy. Had I won, even if he had taken the second game, we would have been tied and had to have played a third game. As it was, I lost two in a row in the second round of the tournament.

After that Chrissa and I went bowling. Somehow I managed to break 100 both games ... but just barely.