Chess Madness

We Might Be Overdoing It

I've been playing chess off and on for many years, and recently off. That's because my opponent beat me repeatedly one night in 2007 while chain-smoking Camels, sams filtre, the worst kind, in a small room, when I figured to beat him over half the time. He said he quit smoking after that, and I said I quit playing chess altogether.

Too bad, too, since other than that blow to the ego, I loved the game, but I steered clear of it pretty much from that day to this month. Oh, I might have thought about it from time to time, but steered clear of it. It has been four long and lonely years away from the chessboard. And now I am back in battle, with my nemesis himself in person. This time it'll be different.

Now he's talked me into joining up at chess.com and we played online, where he again beat me repeatedly, so my record this month is 1 win and 8 losses. I did crush him that one time, so it's not all bad. But one of the losses was the famous Fool's Mate, done in four moves to a checkmate. I don't usually fall for that one. Must be getting rusty.

In a few others I had good winning chances but made some blunder or other ruining it, from not being quite careful enough. For sure in Game 9 I should have had him, but we took a break and broke the concentration.

This guy has already been playing online games including chess but also other types for some time, and has a habit of joining 50 and more games at a time, with a 3-day time limit for moves. And he's gone and talked me into playing 23 simultaneous games like that with him, which are all underway now. Why 23--because then he can see on his profile that he has 100 games in all simultaneously in progress, and needed 23 from me to reach that magic number. The rest are against other people around the world.

But for me, I think this way lies madness. We played at the same time for a couple hours at the speed of bullet or blitz chess, with just a quick read of the screen, move, and on to look at the next screen. There's no time to focus on any one game that way, or even remember next time around what the strategy was going to be, because meanwhile 22 other situations have gone by. I think I could keep track of maybe four games like this at a time, and still remember what I'm trying to do in each one. But 23?

Already there are two games where I am almost guaranteed to lose, considering the heavy casualties, but it isn't over yet. There are still 21 where the issue is more in doubt, and my plan now is to go a little bit slower. We do have three days to move after all, and if I keep up at bullet rate and he doesn't, then he will have a huge advantage.

I've seen enough to believe that if I am a little more careful and not overlook things, I can win the most games, in spite of the lopsided record so far not backing up that assertion at all. All right, with that in mind, I am heading back to the arena for more mental combat.

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