Uncle Cyril and Lightning Chess
Submitted by
on Sat, 01/03/2009 at 2:22pm.
I first met Uncle Cyril in the 1970s when I joined a correspondence tournament (you know, letters, envelopes, stamps, snail mail). Coincidentally, after we signed on for the tournament he moved from a Sydney beach-side suburb to the Blue Mountains; by the time play started he was living about 500 metres (that's 2½ furlongs if you still use imperial measures, or if you're a race horse) from my home. We played the game on the train. He won.
Of course, he didn't call himself Uncle Cyril in those days and so when I saw a fellow-Blue Mountains resident had joined chess.com I didn't realise who it was until I sent him a message to say, Hello.
During the 1970s and 80s we played a lot of chess on the train and he's the second person from the left in this picture from Sydney's Daily Telegraph. I'm in there too, but you can work that out for yourself.
Once on the way home from work Uncle Cyril and I decided to see how many games we could finish between Sydney and the Mountains, and set the clock for five minute blitz. The rule was that the winner would give a one minute handicap for the next game, and continue with one minute handicaps until a game was lost, when the other player would drop a minute or the loser would gain a minute. Both of us got down to two minutes, but neither of us could win at that speed. The outcome was that we finished fourteen games on the way home from work, but I have no idea who won the most, and I doubt if Uncle Cyril remembers either.
So when people start talking about one minute chess I can't even begin to understand how the game is played. (One of the things I've lost with age—apart from mobility, charm and sex appeal—is the ability to think quickly, so I don't play even five minute blitz any more.)
Most chess historians claim that lightning chess only became possible with the advent of chess clocks, but this is not true. My original research has revealed that it has existed since the game's earliest days, and was first employed by Thor in an attempt to get the older, more thoughtful gods to move. (I first began to research Thor's activities in 2000, for a newspaper column which had nothing to do with chess but which you may find entertaining, if a little unnerving.)
Given my shortcomings I was fascinated to read this Olimpbase article by Wojtek Bartelski of Warsaw on the Psychology of Lightning Chess. It runs to seven A4 pages and is well worth a visit, but he summarises his main points this way:
DECALOGUE OF SUCCESSFUL LIGHTNING PLAYER
1. Keep concentration. Concentration is key to success.
2. Keep proper pacing. Do not rush, do not sleep.
3. Be self-confident. If you can't believe in yourself then who can?
4. Know your partner. Make use of his handicaps.
5. Be pushy. Let him know you have advantage over him. Let him fear.
6. Fight. You will see how often you will recover from dead-lost positions.
7. Attack. Let your partner run out of time thinking of defence.
8. Watch the clock. Choose optimal moment to enter clock-oriented mode.
9. Be relaxed. Stress worsens your play. This is just faint fun.
0. Always be fair. It is only a game after all.
And if you've never visited Olimpbase, it's an encyclopaedic treatment of the Chess Olympiads, full of information about teams, players and games.
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