Chess Obliteration
By Dave McGraw
Friday, February 27, 2004
I thought I could still play, but rusty skills and totally lame timing rules rained on my parade.
You can view my Fur Rondy games here:
Once upon a time I could play a pretty good game of chess. My rating sucked because of my unfortunate tendency to blunder stupidly in the middle of a lovely game, but I could hold it together long enough to execute a really picture-perfect game from time to time. Win or lose, an awesome chess game is just that... Awesome!
For a variety of reasons, I lost my interest in chess, and when I quit something, I really quit! In the case of chess, I quit for 33 years. Simple curiousity led me to play a game or two against the early 8-bit computer chess opponents, but they were so incredibly weak, that a game against one was just a fun little diversion to find the quickest mating combo. The strongest challenge I remember was Sargon Chess running on a 4MHz Z80 machine, and I could handle that one if I played a quiet, positional game and let my pawns slowly advance like a steamroller.
As the 16-bit machines began to take over, even occaisional computer chess was just too much work, my interest was still low, and I simply refused to even try. I knew my occaisional blunders would be accurated exploited by the stronger programs, and losing to a stupid machine was not something my ego needed. Accordingly, I spent my computer recreation time dabbling with programming, and playing brainless "shoot-em-ups" like Missile Command and Asteroids. For decades, chess just wasn't in my agenda at all.
A side effect of my Digital Cup project has been that I meet a lot of people, some of whom enjoy an occaisional game of chess. One of my customers is Alex: he plays a quality game and his enthusiasm is infectious. With Alex's prodding, I decided to enter the annual Anchorage Fur Rondevous Tournament. In preparation, I started playing PocketChess on my little PDA. I would usually lose at the higher levels, but I thought I could re-learn the game a little before going into the tourney.
Well, I thought wrong. I blundered early in games one and two, and was only learning to play for real again while under the pressure of actual competition (and getting my ass blasted.) I played very well and had a clear win in game three, but had to ultimately take a draw because my time was short. Game four was stunning and magnificent. I was at my best, confidently seeing how to weather a severe attack from a strong player and counter hard when his attack faltered. I loved that game, and was happily executing a well-deserved victory when my opponent suddenly called "time!" What a bleeping let-down. Game five was my only win, but play by both sides was mediocre, and, having been burned twice in a row, I had one eye locked on the friggin' clock during the entire game.
As far as I can remember, this was the first tourney where I scored less than 50%, and the experience was humiliating. My new mission is to rekindle my old chess flames and come back to save face in next year's Fur Rondy. I know why I failed, and I know how to fix it. So if I can maintain my interest for 12 long months, I'll be back! My can of whoop-ass will have Sicilian, English, Dutch, French and other international, time-tested ingredients that I plan to serve with relish in February 2005.
Dave McGraw is a Telecom, Networking and Computer tech who works for ConocoPhillips Alaska in the Kuparuk oil field and owns the best little business in the Mat-Su Valley, The Digital Cup.