|
JANAKA
These GM guys, Anand, Topolov, Carlsen and Kramnik.
They are POCHs
Pampered
Overrated Chess Players
What do they really know about
playing chess.
When was the last one of these jokers played in a league match?
League Chess is where it is
at, this is why the game was invented.
Six bods who travel miles
across the city to some bleak dim lit dusty venue,
to play chess using small, often incomplete, hollow plastic chessmen.
(I had to use a foreign coin once as white King’s Bishop. Have you
ever
sacced on f7 with a foreign coin?)
This is proper chess.
These GM’s types get venues in holiday resorts with playing conditions
and time controls that would have your average league player
thinking they were in heaven.
They have fancy computer
controlled chess boards that record their moves for them
and at the premier events they even get a celebrity to make their
opening move for them.
How lazy is that?
Playing league chess, as every
league chess players knows, is raw chess.
League players are the games
gladiators and it’s them who ensure that chess lives on.
The POCH’s could not hack it
and they know it.
When was the last time you saw
any of the top 100 players playing (unpaid) in a
mid-week league match in some
school gymnasium against a 1400 player?
Of course the real hero of
league chess is the league team captain.
I was captain of Edinburgh 4
for two seasons and the act of getting 5 other
players to the same venue at
the same time would try the patience of a saint.
I bought a van, fitted it with
chairs and this took us all over the country.
It’s important to have a form
of transport for league chess.
Often guys are picked not on
their playing ability but because they
owned a car.
I. of course was board 1 and
on board 3 I had this chap call Simon Pinkie.
‘Picky Pinkie’ we called him.
This lad would put on a glove
and look away when shaking hands at the
beginning of a game.
He thought all his opponents
‘had germs’.
The glove would come on again
every time he captured a piece so he
would not catch a disease from
anything his opponent had touched.
An odd chap but not a bad
player.
My Boards 4 and 5 were Paddy
Brewson and Ian McSweeney.
They would win all their home
games but at away matches the pair of them
would play 10 moves and offer
a draw.
If the draw was refused they
would resign their games and leave.
Three away games into the
season and I got a call from the League Secretary
asking me if Brewson and
McSweeney actually played in my away games..
“Yes, they do.” I replied.
“Why?”
The League Secretary. told me
the police wanted to know.
My boards 4 and 5 had been
using away matches to go to another part of town
and rob peoples houses. The
chess league match was their alibi.
My board 6 was a Mr Jackerson.
He had a mortal fear of dying
during a game of chess and insisted on taking a
coffin with him to every away
match.
We would park the van and the
6 of us would go into the venue carrying Jackerson’s
coffin. Four of
us had to carry the coffin back out because Brewson and McSweeney
were
by then off screwing people’s houses.
But it was my board two who
caused me the most problems.
I doubt if anyone had to
through the hullabaloo I had to go through.
His name was JANAKA and lived
in St. Margaret’s Loch in Edinburgh.
St. Margaret’s Loch during the
day, at night it is very creepy.
I had to buy ½lb pf chopped
liver and cast it into the loch and JANAKA would rise.
He never spoke. He would just
sit there dripping in the back of the van
staring at Jackerson’s coffin.
At the end of the match I
would drive him back and he would walk into
the loch and disappear.
A brilliant player, he won
every game.
Then one night when we were
playing Balerno, who play their home games
in a Church., I noticed JANAKA
looked ill and uncomfortable.
The thought had never crossed
my mind.
We were on consecrated ground!
Suddenly JANAKA vanished in a
cloud of foul smelling smoke and
we lost the board 2 game by
default.
The following week I went back
to St. Margaret’s Loch and threw in some
chopped liver but nothing
happened.
In an act of sheer curiosity I
threw some chopped liver into Dunsapie Loch
which is also in Edinburgh.
LAGOONA appeared but he does
not know the rules of chess.
Ah, my glass is empty, your
shout I think.
Geoff
|
