Tom's Opinion

I had a friend who taught me how to play chess. Unfortunately, I’ve lost contact with that friend, it’s something I wish hadn’t happened.

The story begins with an amateur chess club in the seventh or eighth grade. I can’t quite remember what year I began playing and to be honest I don’t think it was ever an official club of any sort. We would just stay in and play during recesses and lunches.

Before that though, I had no clue how to play chess. I mean people tried to teach me at various points in my life but it never stuck. For some reason, when I became friends with this certain fellow, chess became much more appealing. You see, he played chess and his enjoyment and passion for it made me want to play it. I guess somehow we got to talking about chess and I must have expressed my interest enough to convince him to teach me and patiently play with me until I could offer some modicum of challenge.

In the eighth grade we were asked by a teacher if we wanted to participate in a city-wide chess tournament, it was only for elementary school students. By that point, with my competitive nature, I felt I was ready for it. My friend jumped at the chance, he’s like that. The school transported us to the game site and there the few of us chess-heads played.

The tournament didn’t have teams, we didn’t represent a school or anything, it was every man for himself. There must have been about 30 or 40 competitors. My friend and I were placed in different groups. I can’t quite remember but I believe there were four or five players in each group. I managed to defeat all of those in my pool and it seemed that my friend defeated all of those in his pool. Somehow, we ended up facing off at the final game.

I had never defeated my friend once to that point. He was a much stronger player. But we played nonetheless, the match began and my friend made many stupid errors. I won that game. I smile about it now, because it was the first time I had defeated him and it was such a grand circumstance in which to do it.

However, in my heart I knew I didn’t really win. You see, we were under unfair time pressure. Games were timed of course as they usually are in chess and we had expected a certain length of time to play that game. The tournament officials told us otherwise though, we had much less time to play, the end of the day was drawing nigh. The errors my friend made were simply the result of people standing over his shoulder telling him to hurry. He was a gracious loser though and always claimed that the victory was fairly mine. To him a game was a game was a game, regardless of time or audience pressure. I disagreed with him then and still do. But I will never forget some of the details of that day. It’s funny how you remember certain people with certain events in your life.

Since that eighth grade tournament until about two years ago (say 10 years or so), I have won two games against this friend, and he’s wiped the floor with me more times than I can count. I only have two other friends that play chess, both out of the country though one is coming back in July. It is a little sad that I don’t really have anyone to play chess with though.

This entry was posted Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Main. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.