Didn’t the last game just say it all…
Never nothing more than your average club and county player, my chess playing days in my younger years weren’t much to be proud of. But that’s not the point, finding meaning in them is however. Before a long, long break, I played competitive chess from February 1988 to May 1997…and didn’t my last game of that particular epoch just say it all?
It was played in my home club Kent’s/Luton and was the last league game of the 96/97 season, played against Leighton Buzzard B team, we were positioned along the side of the dance floor between the bar and the entrance/exit for the match. I was part of the furniture back then and had been captain of B team and tournament organizer for 5 years already. Slowly but surely, I had lost almost all interest in everything chess related by 1997, and more importantly, was in my second year at university too. Giving up chess for once and for all to focus on my education felt logical and wise, and that’s what became my every intention. ‘Why’s that’ you ask? Off the record, it almost did at the beginning of that season because I sauntered off to Turku University, Finland (a.k.a Turun Yliopisto: Turun means Turku with the possessive form case ending, ylio means over, pisto means school), to study Logical Positivism and Plato in the unending rain and snow of that first semester, as part of the Erasmus exchange programme I had signed up for.
Presumably, I must have asked for someone to step in whilst I was away for when I returned, just days before Chistmas, I resumed responsibilites once more, and didn’t the last game of that season just say it all?
My opponent, who I knew well but cannot remember his name anymore, was rated around 150 and I was black. He was a well to do fellow, grey hair, dressed like commuters often did and conducted himself with impeccable manners always. An e4 player, I responded with the only thing I had some idea of -that being the French Defence. Being unsporting and wanting to win by boring me to death, or perhaps being downright unimaginative, or whatever it was, we had an exchange variation on our hands and a symmetrical position soon arose -as you might expect for a game played between two average club players. 1 I just went through the motions mechanically and was of course partly to blame. A lifeless early middle-game position arose and true to form I switched off altogether. I don’t recall where we were in the league for the final match of the season but my team never got relegated once -I made sure of that! Wherever we were in the league, the game had the feel of there being nothing left to play for, so presumably we were safe.2
With so little interest in chess left and no intention to carry on anymore, a bore draw should have been the icing on the cake. But it didn’t go that way: a talentless me never did improve that much in the 90s 3 but I did become more solid as a player and was not easily beaten. I usually played board two in division two of the Beds. league, usually playing opponents around 170, usually grinding out draws. I never usually played to win much because of this. My team, chosen by me, had strength and depth, and if Steve Yates and I held our own on the top two boards, the bottom three (Michael Josephs, Peter Montogmery + one floater, often journalist Sean Ingle) would win us the match almost always. But instead of play out a draw rather unthinkingly, I impulsively threw caution to the wind and unleased a devasting attack in a completely symmetrical postion that won me the game unexpectedly as my opponent was caught off guard completely. Back in the day before computer analysis, most would not dream of launching their sheltering kingside pawns down the board at their opponent’s king (also castled kingside) just to open things up no matter how good or bad they were. Perhaps in favour of what is commonly classified as ‘Old Man’s Chess‘, my aged opponent didn’t know what to do and just sat back. Somehow I gained control of the e-file with my rooks and the move XX. …Re2 brought serious problems as mate was imminent. He couldn’t cope and resigned against an attack that came out of nowhere just to alleviate boredom.
Doesn’t that just say it all? How replete with detachment does it have to get? That summer didn’t I just go off gallivanting around central Europe with student friends made in Finland? The following year, studies concluded successfully and America after Cambridge it was.4 Either study or travel reigned supreme and I never ever looked back that decade -chess had been vanquished. Even when, I even returned from America all loved up by a partner in crime Philosophy graduate from that neck of the woods. We not only walked past a team mate’s house en route to The Moat House pub in Luton once and never stopped to knock on his door so that I could introduce her to him, but weeks later then walked past the school opposite St. Albans Cathedral, with I pointing out in passing only that I played chess there once -she was not interested and neither was I!5
That is the way the cookie crumbles as they like to say over that side of the pond: my last game of a 9-year chessfest where 496 competitive games amassed ended in a way which said it all – I simply was no longer interested. That game I won yes but it mattered not. How it was won did so, but importantly, it brought the final curtain down on the show! Life was to be lived and live it I did -no time for board games anymore I’m afraid… .
- It was only later in life, when I returned to chess refreshed, better educated and able to study more critically, that I learnt how to play against that line better through the games of former champ Alekhine; in particular on which side to castle, which squares to develop the knights to and where to redeploy them for a kingside attack…assuming of course your opponent castled kingside early (as they so often do at that level).
↩︎ - Through this year’s continuous study, a broadener understanding of how memory functions has emerged, which allows this raconteur to avoid proclaiming history being made here, instead, what little I recall and why I can recall it is mentioned only. No confabulation in play here.
↩︎ - Even though during that sojourn in Finland I did play an FM down ‘The 3 Beers’, the student pub, and beat him, he was rated 2340, way above my rating. further aside: that only came about because he was working behind the bar, and that evening he had great difficulty with a very drunk customer who would not leave and wanted to fight him when pushed to do so, and whilst sat supping pints with another Englishman, a Yorkshire man named Phil, who lived in St. Albans and studied the Finnish language, I was having none of that and threw him out myself. For this the barman was most grateful, wanted to join us for a chat and buy me a drink: a common interest was found and so we played. Thankfully, I did not make a habit of running goons out of his bar -just the once! That was one of many memories I have of Phil, the best by far being when we travelled up way beyond the Artic Circle to Pyhätunturi with another Englishman and a Dutchman named Robert, who we shall never forgot. Upon arrival we found a tourist hut to gather information and various questions were asked. One by Robert, however, blew Phil right back as well as the man behind the desk providing us with information. Both were left speechless for a few seconds because Robert asked where the bears were. His reply was that they were hibernating (it was winter and it was dark all day long). Robert then asked ‘Is it okay to go into the caves and take pictures of them?’ Stunned, Phil glanced straight at me, came up to me and whispered ‘If he wants to go into caves and wake bears up that’s up to him. I’m not doing it.’ Struggling not to laugh at it. Phil also made me laugh on the trip when he joked about Robert’s accounts of going to the Spar supermarket down the hill, he said ‘it’s like Scott of the Antartic everytime’. I made Phil laugh once because Robert placed his boots too near the open fire in our cabin and they caught on fire. Later that night we went off to the resort in the evening for some drinking and dancing, where Robert met a Russian woman with jet black hair and went off with her. When he returned, he talked about being surprised to have had the opportunity and said he didn’t know what she saw in him, to which I quipped ‘Maybe she liked the smell of burnt rubber‘, which Phil found highly amusing.
↩︎ - The year after, America coast to coast twice over and Euston Square, London all Summer long too, with Belgium and Thailand the following season to start the new decade off -boy did I have itchy feet by then!
↩︎ - Regarding the time spent in The Moat House, my assertions are also corroborated by the recollection that family friend
and piss headMarc Courtney, spotted us and staggered up asking ‘Ya still playin’ the chess?’, with some slur, whilst performing an impromptu impersonation of me playing by moving invisible chess pieces about on an invisible chess board with his hands moving about in an ungainly manner. I believe I either lied with a quick ‘Yes’ or said nothing so as to get rid of him as soon as I could as I was accompanied and she had only just arrived in the country.
Rather reluctantly, I should preface the previous paragraph with the following: prior to bumping into Marc Courtney, and before heading off to California in 98, I was working at Cambridge train station as a porter. One afternoon Matt Payne, who briefly played for Luton in the early 90s spotted me and came up to ask how I was. He asked whether I knew what had happened to former tutor, friend and team mate Roman Korzeniewski, who sadly died ealier that year, suffering a heart attack in a hotel in Norwich, aged 42 only. Caught off guard completely by such saddening news, I knew nothing of it and had no contact details of anyone anymore, so had to ask for some for further information. It can be concluded that chess really was not part of my life anymore by then. Further proof can be found some weeks later at Heathrow Airport, as I awaited my flight to LAX. I saw in the departure lounge who was 2nd county team captain when I played, a certain John Shaw. In the corresponding match against Leighton Buzzard B in that last season (mentioned above in the post), I played him just after I had arrived back from Finland. I had the white pieces for that game and beat him with the Stonewall Attack, he was rated 152 then. I often helped him carry sets from his car into venues for county matches and we got on quite well, however, at the departure lounge I didn’t speak to him and didn’t want to say hello even though he had spotted me. Chess had already been forgotten about, and I had far more important things to think about -that being by far the longest flight of my entire life, whether my bicycle was defintely on it, and which British heavy metal songs to keep listening to on my walkman. In total, chess only appeared in my thoughts 4 times in 1998. ↩︎
M J M
Bahrain
McCreadyandChess 