|
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
Chessville
Advertise to Single insert:
|
Playing Today Perry The PawnPusher
"So, what's your Elo rating, mister?" Children who play chess make me nervous. Maybe it's remembering all those old pictures of young Sammy Reshevsky in his sailor's suit, trouncing miles of grown ups twice his size and six times his age. Maybe it's because every once in a while, one of the kids will surprise you and turn out to be the next World Champion. Under pressure, I will admit that most of the youth who play at our Club are well mannered and properly behaved. With a few notable exceptions. One of them was sitting across the board from me. "Expert? Master? Grandmaster?" he snorted. "Never mind. Let's make this one a fast one, ok?" It was not so much a question as a command. "Supposed to be a good movie on cable tonight, if you don't get in my way." He gave a sneer that looked more like heartburn. Ah, the impatience of youth. Try as I might, I could not imagine the young Capablanca when he was playing for the Cuban championship - complaining that he wanted to finish his games quickly, so he could go out and catch a flick. I punched his clock, to start our game. Not that I didn't have other punching ideas as well. My opponent blitzed out his first dozen moves without a moment's hesitation. He scowled deeply in turn each time I thought about my own choices. The boy had an attitude. Jose Raul Capablanca had been only 12 when he played his match against Corzo, back around the turn of the century. Even though the outcome of play would eventually show him to be much stronger than his older opponent, the adolescent's approach to the challenge had been the proper one. "I began to play with the conviction that my adversary was superior to me;" the World Champion would recall, "he knew all the openings, and I knew none; he knew many games of the great masters by heart, things of which I had no knowledge whatever, besides he had played many a match and had the experience and all the tricks that go along with it, while I was a novice." No, I was not playing a young Capablanca today. I tried a few more moves, but could not escape censure. "You want this variation of the Queen's Gambit?" my opponent complained, as our pieces piled together in the middle of the board, heightening the tension in the chess position. "Nobody plays this line any more," he brayed. "Just that old fish, Perry." Meaningful pause. "And you." He cackled. "That's who: two Nobodies. I wonder who got the idea from who?" He found this coincidence quite amusing. I found it kind of odd, myself: I would have to check up on the old pawnpusher about that. In the mean time, I thought of the young Bobby Fischer, who was unfairly characterized as "an obnoxious youngster with no consistent respect for anybody." Well, sometimes fairly. But Bobby had shown respect for the old lines of play, as well as the players of old. He often borrowed their overlooked gems and re-introduced them into grandmaster play - much to his opponents' dismay. All is new that has been forgotten. No, I was not playing a young Fischer today. I leaned into the position before me, and relentlessly began swapping and exchanging, draining the board of almost all of its pieces and pawns. What we had left, when I was finished, looked like a balanced ending. My opponent was not amused. "Great!" he mumbled, scribbling down the last few moves on his nearly illegible scoresheet. "Now he thinks he's Pal Benko, endgame expert and past master of the passed pawn! Caissa preserve us." Two wide eyes rolled heaven-ward, and a baleful "Boorrinngg!" escaped pouting lips. Then, after a little more thought, he recited the old maxim, " 'All rook and pawn endings are drawn,' right?" I wasn't about to tell him this one wasn't. A half dozen moves later, a winning strategy was clear in my mind. My opponent's silent squirming showed it was dawning upon him, as well. The movie would have to wait. The game took a serious turn, and I was sure I had him when he went a full ten minutes without insulting me. And then a strange thing happened. I became seriously annoyed at his lack of resistance. His lack of will. His inability to find a way to stay with the struggle. To struggle at all. The game had gotten terribly quiet, and my opponent, wonderfully still. He looked like a kid again. No longer like a gargoyle. We reached a turning point, where he would be forced in a few moves to give up a pawn. Surely it was not too hard to see that there was an alternative to this meek surrender? The young Kasparov would have sacrificed his rook, right then and there -- for three pawns, and some very double edged and unclear counterplay, based on the resulting passed pawns. I was certain that Judit Polgar, who is still young, and whose greatness still lies ahead of her, would have found the line, too. But I was not playing a young Kasparov, or a young Polgar today. I was playing, after all, I reminded myself forcefully, a young man of modest talent. With an immodest view of himself, perhaps, but that was his own burden to bear. He turned his king over, somewhat later, helplessly -- much too late -- when I had already queened a pawn, and was poised to queen another. "I was hoping to hold on for a stalemate," he mumbled. Then he solemnly made his way towards the door. A fleeting thought slid along the diagonals of my mind: would he come back stronger to play again, or would this disappointment cause him to give the game up? I guess that's another reason why children who play chess make me nervous.
|
The
|
|||
|
|||||
