McCreadyandChess

A quirk of fate?

‘This is no man’s garden. Every one who is nobody sits there with a special satisfaction, watching the swift, addle-faced motorist, the horseman, the farmer, the tradesman, the publican, go by; for here he is secure as in the grave, and even as there free -if he can- to laugh or scoff or wonder or weep at the world.’

Edward Thomas, The Heart of England (1909), Chapter 5

In the soft light of the gentrified past, what can be seen in the waters that ran there, still and deep now, cluttered by that discarded long since?

English postmodernists, such as Jenkins, may write that historians are ambitious: facts are trite, it's what they mean that is of more importance. English Grandmasters, such as Speelman, may say: chess is not just about results, it's about how you won or lost also. I may posit below that a certain type of result reveals that left unsaid for so long; unreflective in past but shining clear in the strong morning light in the scorched desert where I sit typing. But why did that one unwonted thing bring delight always when chess it was and chess it was not? How did that which is, -p and also not -p coexist in harmony? 

‘Some reminded me that formerly I had made a poor thing of life, and said that it was too late. Others supposed that I had jested. A few asked me to stay with them and rest. The sky and the earth, and the men and the women drank of the poison that I had drunken, so that I could not endure the use of my eyes, and I entered a shop to buy some desperate remedy that should end it all at once, when, seeing behind the counter a long-dead friend in wedding attire, I awoke.’

Edward Thomas, The Heart of England (1909), Chapter 6

One of Freud’s favourite quotes from Nieztsche comes from Beyond Good and Evil, and that is ‘A thought comes when it wants not when I want’.¹ Some days ago, one came and stood dithering on the horizon like some forlorn apparition who had lost his way. Something more wrong than right required pensive reflection -but just a touch as it floated free in the midst of that time past. Why was it whenever I went to play chess and won by default I was always delighted by it? I mean, if you go somewhere to play chess for the day or the evening, only to find your opponent hasn’t arrived, you should feel a disappointment of sorts -but I never did.² Upon this revelation the reason was uncovered easily enough and there is proof of it in a previous post of course. I was always a team player first. My team winning meant more to me than me winning…it was always like that.

When only 20 years old, at the AGM of my home club, I nominated myself to become captain of the B team and club tournament organizer also, holding both positons for 5 straight years before I abandoned ship and went off studying, gallivanting around the globe and getting up to all sorts of things. I still recall Ken Liddle, the then club secretary, asking me who I wanted in my team, and so I picked the strongest team I could. I was diligent and my team was always strong in the league. I never allowed defaults to happen and always made sure those in my team were kept in the loop of upcoming matches. I floated up too and played for the A team also for many seasons, the second of which I saved it from relegation by beating Neil Hickmann of Bedford A team in a queen endgame I played very solidly, receiving pats on the back by many of the 30 or so who stood and watched, especially team captain Damon D’ Cruz. I was always keen for my team, and any other team I played in, to do well. This is most easily remembered by how I conducted myself during matches. I would often not sit at the board and be up and about to see how everyone else was doing with great regularity, especially when it was my own team. When walking around, the thing I said most often to those playing was ‘How’s your game going?’ In my second season as captain, A team player Nick McBride gave me a typewriter to use and I began producing match reports, with my Board 3 Michael Josephs commenting ‘He’s done this before’ affectionately upon the issue of the first one.

Whenever I turned up to play and my opponent didn’t show I was delighted because it was a point for the team, which I was far from sure of should I be playing.³ Winning my own games never really mattered that much unless the team needed me to, then it did…please allow me to explain further. If we were outgraded or up against it, then I was more focused and on top of my game. This held true if promotion and especially relegation were possible also. What I found more difficult however, and generally avoided was taking calculated risks which unbalanced the position if we were losing the match and I needed to play for a win from a drawn position. I was generally solid and played positionally, tactics weren’t my forte so I didn’t like to open the position up generally speaking. What usually happened was I would be more on the look out for opportunities and try to take them if the risk involved wasn’t high, that’s all I was capable of -I just heightened my awareness, and tried to lift my game that’s all. I was far better at telling myself I had to play for a win before play began than telling myself to start playing for one during a game, should such a situation arise. That was how it stayed really. With regards to defaults, in retrospect it does seem a little odd that I would travel miles, sometimes many, just to play chess then be delighted I didn’t have to and would wait around for hours instead watching games unfold. I don’t think it’s too uncommon or unsurprising however.

All this helps partly explain why I never did play in that many tournaments and often lost interest in them no matter how I did. ⁴ It’s true I did care about the first one I won but not the second. I nearly won three more too but one coincided with the 1990 World Cup and it was a hot summer’s day in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. I won all my games on the final day of play but kept playing as hurriedly as I could and kept on running out to the public phones in the grammar school grounds with my yellow T-shirt and grey corduroys on to find out what the football scores were. When I was asked by lifelong friend Damon D’ Cruz how I got on, I said ‘I won all my games’, he congratulated me but I cut that short and returned to asking him about the football as England had played Cameroon that day in the quarter finals, and I wanted to know whether they had made it through to the next round and how.

So I liked to play chess and not play chess but always preferred the latter when it arose. What does this tell you? It tells you I was not interested in improvement much as missing the opportunity to play meant missing the opportunity to improve your rating and understanding of the game. I recall many instances where it was possible to change board order for me to get a game and someone else drop out instead but never went for that.⁵ Perhaps once or twice over the years it did happen, perhaps a few times more even but it certainly wasn’t the norm, I would remember otherwise. What is also important to note is that I generally had good relations in chess during the 90s and especially liked the drives to and from venues. And of course if we had won the match then the mood in the car home was usually jubilant. Often you would be asked what happened in your game or congratulated on your result. I felt as though I belonged to something, which in that period of my life meant a lot to me.

To sum up, a quirk of fate? Yes, I liked being part of a team on many levels, and being team captain especially. I just liked to play really, and in being relatively average, wasn’t too intent on getting much better, a bit maybe yes but not much, so dropping out never bothered me at all. I wasn’t very confident as a player either and preferred to avoid losing more than winning. My style was rather solid and drawish and lacked dynamism mostly. I averaged over 50 competitive games a year, was at my local club almost every week (we did not close for Summer), went round many friend’s houses to play often and usually had my head in one book or another that I had bought or borrowed from the local library, so there was enough to keep me active. In retrospect, I like that it is all rather unspectacular but noteworthy nonetheless.⁶

‘Even so in the long wet ruts did the flase hope of spring contend with the shadows: even so at last did it end, when the dead leaves on the tree begin to stir madly in the night wind, with the sudden ghostly motion of burnt paper on a still fire when a draught stirs it inm a silent room at night; and even the nearest trees seemed to be but fantastic hollows in the misty air.’

Edward Thomas, The Heart of England (1909), Chapter 6

1. If you think it’s worth it because you find pretentious titles alluring for whatever reason, you may wish to invest time in the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, chasing up Paul Ricoeur as it’s him who got that started. Very powerful ideas yes. But like his compatriot Gadamer, his writing skills leave a lot to be desired (although at least he saves us the courtesy of often adding afterthoughts that require so much deconstruction you’ll be up all night at it, for example (and it’s because of his use of concepts such as these that Schopenheur is accused of a lack of historicism in some of his ideas. And the same could be said of Kant). However, it should be pointed out that Ricouer’s works identify connections and distintions between Marx, Nietzsche and Freud far more convincingly than anyone else ever has done or even come close to in my opinion. His elucidation of how all three detail how human motivations are usually unconscious is most impressive. ↩︎
2. It does need to be stated that I did also lack confidence in myself for I was weak and uncertain in many respects when I was young. ↩︎
3. Between Feb 88 and May 97 I played 496 competitive games, my win rate was 44% and my opponents were usually rated higher than me by approximately 50-150 Elo points. ↩︎
4. I never did count the number of them but it isn’t very many 10-20 I would say. They certainly stopped before I started university in September 95. The last two being Nottingham April 94 and St. Albans April 95. I had little interest in either and only really went because friends did and drove me to both. I went along for the ride you could say, after all, what else was there to do? ↩︎
5. Should you care to broaden your understanding of how memory functions (rely on philosophers and not historians or psychologists for this), you may pick up on the point that fogetting is an essential feature of it. If so, as is surely the case, this precludes me from saying with absolute certainty that this held true for every single instance, of which there were dozens and dozens. I am, however, confident I would remember if that were so because I always wanted my team to win no matter where they were in the league. Every rule has its exceptions however.. ↩︎
6. This I have to curtail. Once again, Nieztsche is remarkably adept at using rhetoric to achieve his aims, and in one case describes what certain types of academics and writers are forbade from detailing, according to their respective professions. In my case -well this is just a blog and I am playful often- but there are certain things…paths I can’t go down any further, and for many reasons. As Hayden White will tell you time and time again, all narratives are emplotted and mine are no different. It is undoubtedly obvious I was first and foremost a team player, the evidence is overwhelming but what I can’t detail here is how things were outside of chess and how I coped and did not cope with them inside playing venues. It was the case that I always wanted to talk to other players about their games and get involved with post-game analysis also but I never really did say all that much for reasons best left unsaid. Let’s just leave it as: I was, in fact, a cause of concern for a time in that 9 year stretch longer than you may think: the looks I got most often, especially by club secretary Ken said it all: they could see something was wrong but didn’t know what it was and didn’t want to ask, as I was still young and it could be anything -very English! It was not just anything but on that note, here this footnote should end. I was very shy and didn’t like to show how I felt at all. I reached out the best I could through talk of chess instead but breaking the silence beyond that I could never do and always shied away from. That was true most when things were at their worst, but as the years rolled by, the more that tailed off…enough said. ↩︎

M J M

Me in desert…best description -it’s like an oven out there!

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