Back To Chess

When you write a blog for 18 years, you occasionally end up repeating stories or at least covering similar topics multiple times. For example, I shared that I learned how to play chess in third grade when one of my classmates taught many of the kids in the class how to play. While the longer version of the story is here and I've since learned that my classmate graduated from Harvard and now writes children's books. I'm bringing up chess again. 

My sixth grader, The Moose, recently signed up for chess.com. I believe that some of his classmates started to play and he wants to join them. He still has a lot to learn, and I look forward to working with him over the next few months, but I decided to login to my own chess.com account. It turns out that my last match was in July 2010. That's a long time ago! I played my first match on the website in over a dozen years on Monday against someone from Iran. This was almost as big as the US-Iran World Cup match, and the end result was the same in that I won. The only difference is that I didn't have a groin/abdominal injury like Christian Pulisic after a big move in my match! 

I was rusty, but it was fun playing again. Later, I started a match with someone in Algeria. Even playing poorly, I came 13 seconds away from winning a match I should have lost convincingly. So now, I'm all in for playing chess again. One match a night which cannot exceed 20 minutes is a good way to get back into chess. I definitely feel like I'm using my, um, what's that thing inside your head called? Maybe chess will help me remember. 

On Tuesday, I played again and lost to someone in Vietnam. Not satisfied with that match, I played another one against someone else in Australia and lost again. Then, I defeated someone from Chile and called it a night. I even won using a pawn for checkmate!

I find it interesting that in my 5 matches this week  I still haven't played anyone in North America. Chess really is an international game where language isn't necessary. This can definitely become addicting. I'll need to make sure to only play a few matches a night. Sleep is good!

Found In My Basement: Chess Trophy

Of all of my hundreds, I mean, several trophies, I am most proud of this one. This is the 1st place trophy from the 16th Annual Library Chess Tournament (1989) held at the Squirrel Hill branch of the Carnegie Library. I went to a new school for third grade where I didn't know many of my classmates. However, I became friends with the other male students pretty quickly (I think the girls had cooties) as we bonded playing football during recess. Once the weather got colder, recess was spent indoors. Looking for something to do, one of my new classmates, David Z., taught us how to play chess. For the entire winter and on rainy days in the spring, we played chess. Fast-forward to two years later (5th grade). David Z. and I were the top two players at the library chess tournament and played a match to determine the winner. In the case, I proved victorious as the student defeated the teacher. This allowed me to advance to the chess tournament of all of the Western Pennsylvania Carnegie Library winners where I fared pretty well. I switched to a different school in 6th grade and David soon moved out of state. Near the end of high school, I saw that he made the USA Today's All-Academic High School list and that he was going to Harvard. I have no idea where he is today, so I may need to use the power of the internet to search. Click here for more about the Found in My Basement series.

TMI Thursday: Not Quite Bobby Fischer

One of the reasons for my trip home to Pittsburgh last weekend was to clean up my childhood bedroom. My parents recently put their house on the market so I needed to sort through what I wanted to keep and throw away.

Sea shells stuck in Plaster of Paris (is that the correct name?) from an art project I did when I was 5 = throw away.

Baseball cards, football cards, hockey cards, and even some type of Alf trading cards = keep.

A slightly dented plastic globe (not a nice fancy globe) that features East Pakistan = garbage.

A scrapbook with award certificates and newspaper articles I was in = keep.

The scrapbook brought back some positive memories, one of which I will share now. I was on the high school chess team. I’ve definitely mentioned before that I attended the same high school that NFL players Steve Breaston, Ryan Mundy and Jason Taylor (sort of) attended. Let’s just say that I was not fighting off girls because of my chess team involvement. Anyway, team is probably a strong word as we basically played each other and then competed in one annual tournament against 7 or 8 other high schools. As a sophomore, my team, consisting of all sophomores, won the tournament defeating the junior/senior team among those from the rival high schools. We were even featured in the now defunct Pittsburgh Press newspaper. I found the article and winning certificate in the scrapbook.

This brings me to a negative memory found in the scrapbook. As a senior, I was bumped from the #1 team for a sophomore despite the fact that we won the previous two years. We went back-to-back and were going for a third straight title. How could they break up the Fab 4? (No we didn’t have that nickname. Or any nickname.) Facing the replacement guy in the tournament, despite making a dumb move to lose my queen, I salvaged a draw. I won my other three matches and finished with the top score of anyone in my seat. However, my record wasn’t enough to carry my teammates, and the #1 team ended up winning the tournament. That meant that my former teammates all won 3 straight years. I was bitter, and as you can probably tell, still am. Of course, I decided to keep the scoresheet from this last tournament in the scrapbook because of my high score.

There’s no real end to the story here. That was my last competitive chess match. Except for the occasional times I play against my brother (I always win), I haven’t played chess in many years. I guess the fact that I remember a chess tournament match from 16 years ago is worthy of a TMI post. Don't feel bad for me though; I now write a blog. And I bet that my blog is better than anyone else's from that chess tournament!

Make sure to visit LiLu for more TMI Thursdays. Plus, you can click here to see all of my TMI Thursday archives.