A Brief History

I was introduced to the game of Chess back in the olden days of the early 80s, when swatch watches and jelly bracelets were “in”. When I was in 1st grade, I went to an after-school program once a week to learn the basics of chess. The instructor was Sunil Weeramantry, who went on to become one of the premier scholastic chess coaches in the country. He’s been responsible for countless champion chess teams, and is the stepfather of GM Hikaru Nakamura.

So one would think that learning to play chess from him would set me squarely on the path to greatness. Yeah. Well, he did teach me how to play chess, and I certainly enjoyed my exposure to the game. But when school was out for the summer, chess flew right out of my brain (along with math and cursive writing).

At some point, my grandfather bought me a chess set and encouraged me to play. He loved the game, and tried to impart some of his enthusiam to me. I played occasionally, but there wasn’t any passion for the game in me.

Fast forward to high school. I don’t really remember why I did it, but I joined the chess club. Yes, that’s right – I was a chess club dork in high school. Hey – at least I wasn’t a band geek. They had to wear stupid-looking hats! With feathers!

My good friend at the time was also a chess player, and so we joined the club together. There must have been some passion for the game in me at that point, because I ended up becoming co-president with my friend. Everyone joined the USCF, and we played rated matches against several other schools, and within our own club. Ah, the days of my provisional rating! The sky was the limit! The future was bright!

I came out of the provisional rating process with a rating slightly above 1200. Whoa. Staggeringly average!

In addition to attending the weekly chess fests with the high school chess club, my buddy and I also went to several meetings of the Westchester County Chess Club. We played several rated tournaments and got slapped around by the skillful players that frequented the club. I came outta there with my current rating: 1181. My last rated game was played in March of 1992.

I have a rather amusing memory of my rebellious days as a high school chess maverick. After an evening at the WCC, I was standing outside the club, waiting to be picked up by my mom (wasn’t I the coolest?). I had my travel chess set with me, which consisted of a roll-up board, pieces, scoresheets, etc. All this was in my travel case, which was a long, thin, black bag with handles. It looked like this one, except mine was all black:

While I was waiting with my bag, a police car drove by. As it passed me, it slowed down and pulled over a little distance away. The officer got out of the car and approached me. WTF? I just watched him walk up to me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Uh, just waiting for my ride.” Again, WTF?
“What’s in the bag?”
Then it hit me. He obviously thought that I was carrying an AK-47 or some other vicious assault weapon in this suspicious black bag. I laughed, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing. I stopped laughing.
“It’s just my chess set,” I said, showing him the picture of the Knight sewn on the side.
“Can you open the bag?”
So I opened up the bag, revealing my wicked vinyl board and evil plastic chess pieces. Chess pieces may be like weapons in some people’s hands, but I was pretty harmless. Satisfied, the police officer walked back to his car and drove off.

Ha, I was like a chess hoodlum or something.

OK, so that’s my sordid chess past. Maybe my brief history wasn’t really so brief. Thanks to the three of you that actually read this far. You have far more stamina (or perhaps a greater threshold for pain) than the average Joe or Mary.

Next time, I’ll recount my glorious return to the game after 15 years. Once we get all this personal crap outta the way, we’ll knuckle down and begin the journey on the road to improvement.

The Odyssey begins…

So I thought I would kick off this blog with a “State of the Union”-type address. You know, so that all of you out there in the Big Blue Blogosphere know just what you are dealing with here. And as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I will spare you the reading (for now).

The position pictured below occurred in a blitz game that I was playing on FICS last week. I’m playing white, and black just played Qf3. What move did I play in response?

Kxf3 you say? Well, if anyone else were sitting behind the white pieces, that would be an excellent guess! But I was the one sitting behind the white pieces, not someone that actually knows how to play the game of chess. You have to think more blundery.

For some reason, I had it in my head that the Queen was covered by another black piece. Clearly, this is not the case, but in my head at the time, that Queen was invulnerable. So I played the only move (in my feeble mind) that would get my King out of check. I played Kg1.

Every time I look at that picture, I wince. It’s little consolation to remember that I had less than a minute on my clock at the time. That’s really no excuse for a blunder this spectacular. I proceeded to lose the game, after my opponent picked his jaw up off the floor, ate my Rook, and continued to punish me for my error.

Ah well, live and learn. That’s what I tell myself to avoid bursting into tears.

I started this blog to chronicle my journey along the path to chess mastery. As you can see, I’ve got a long way to go. Stop laughing, sit back, relax, and enjoy. It should be quite a trip…