A Wood Pusher's Lament
Submitted by
on Fri, 07/31/2009 at 5:01pm.
Some people start things later than others and I was thirty-four when I learned to play chess.
Having absolutely no knowledge of the game I had thought that mastery came after decades at the board and that grandmasters would only achieve their titles after a lifetime of study and experience. To anybody who has played, studied or read about the game, that statement reveals an appalling lack of knowledge, but many non-chess players still think such things. There is also the misconception that one's chess ability is directly linked to one's intelligence—but that's not necessarily the case, either.
Almost forty years after picking up those fascinating pieces for the first time I've finally realised why my game hasn't improved much. I'm a wood pusher.
Here's how it works.
I sit down to play and make a move. My opponent replies. I make my second, and third, and by the time I get to move six in any opening I'm on virgin soil. Why? Because I've never bothered to learn any openings properly. It's a bit like suffering from geriatric dementia—every game is a new experience.
Once I finish with that pesky opening sequence I examine the board looking for obvious weaknesses; when I fail to find one, I push a piece. Sometimes, heaven forbid, I even push a pawn. Then I wait for my opponent's reply before pushing another piece.
That's basically how my game progresses—push and pause.
It's a style based on optimism rather than confidence, and depends on my opponent doing something even less productive than my own move. It makes use of luck rather than hard thinking.
Of course, over the years I've built up a reasonable repertoire of chess knowledge and from time to time I get the urge to add a bit more to it; but, like many people, I'll never know what my true chess potential might have been because I haven't done enough work.
Chess isn't the only thing I started later than most. I was forty-five when I learned to swim so that I could enter a triathlon. For me the swim leg was always very slow—it was another kind of opening I didn't do well—and I always felt my race began after I climbed out of the water. I found it irritating when my training partner agonised about how badly he swam when I would have sacrificed my first-born to have been as fast as him.
So I realise that my lament must be irritating to chess players whose rating is even lower than mine and who would love to have those extra few hundred points.
It's all in the perception, isn't it, and comes back to that oft-quoted Indian proverb about chess being an ocean in which an elephant can bathe or a gnat can drink.
Does the most pleasure in chess come from simply playing the game, or from winning? Certainly it's more satisfying to win—always assuming you've done it cleverly and not because your opponent's king had a death wish—but is winning what it's all about?
I'd love to hear your opinion.
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