Sunday, January 15, 2006
Chess
If you were to find all the dreary desks in dull offices of London that I've sat in during the last five years, and take all the hard-drives away and scan them for .pgn files, you would find a lot. I have no idea how many, but the number would be very high indeed. On the internet you can play games much faster than over the board, because mouse movements never knock over pieces or misplace them on the corner of squares; my usual speed limit is a minute each for each person. As I took some of the jobs I've had precisely and only for the reason that there wasn't much to do and I could play chess all day, there must have been days where I've played 200 games of chess, just in that day. And of course, I also have games via email, I have games on a slow-play server (70 or so games at the moment) and I play in the evenings at home, or for a club, and every now and again on a weekend for a tournament. Does the number of chess games I've played number only in the tens of thousands, or in the hundred's? I have no idea - really.
Chess this way is a weak pleasure; it is a little bit of fun, a somewhat interesting exercise, mostly in tactical sparring and trickery, perhaps like a crossword or Soduko puzzle. It's nothing special. Yet if you were count up those .pgn files, you would think this was not only my only passion, but also my profession. Was I really that bored? No, surely I had better things to do - even if just read a novel on long loo breaks, and make a point of complaining about curries or a housemate's cooking to my boss.
So, I cannot deny the obvious. That all my Blitzin' is a form of repetitive behaviour, not just another innocent example of chess as a hobby. Repetitive behaviour, I know, is a way to force the universe, that so often feels - & is - beyond control, and chaotic, and dangerous, into safe and reliable patterns; it is a way to master a little corner of this vast space we float in and name it ours. Or: it is a way to create ontological security in a changeful, unrelable world. Still, I do not have OCD, I have a bad habit. I don't miss blitzin' at all when I don't do it, and if there's no internet around, I do not seek it out for that purpose. I do it when it's there - but a hell of a lot, and when I could be doing better things.
I sometimes wonder who the other players are, who anonymously blitz as guests on the ICC alongside me. There are some who never resign - they leave the programme as if their computer had been disconnected. There are those who always offer a draw before resigning, or lose on time, or deliberately play bad moves, those who pretend to be Bobby Fischer, and there's one who as soon as the game is finished censors each opponent from talking to him or challening him again. In a word - it is odd, very odd, that I have spent so many hours in the company of these hidden, fleeting creatures. That I, in fact, am one, and that no doubt at some point they wonder about me as I wonder about them. If you are a fellow blitzee, then I'm the guy who goes 1. d4 c5 2. Bf4 cxd4 3. Bxb8 Rxb8 4. Qxd4, threat 5. Qxa7. And I'm better than you.
Count up those files; 10,000? 100,000? 500,000? Even if you did do so, you will not witness me in that number: The count records not only chess moves, not just the time I have killed, but a mistaken choice of mine: to make myself into a drifting shadow. That tally counts my cowardice.
Chess this way is a weak pleasure; it is a little bit of fun, a somewhat interesting exercise, mostly in tactical sparring and trickery, perhaps like a crossword or Soduko puzzle. It's nothing special. Yet if you were count up those .pgn files, you would think this was not only my only passion, but also my profession. Was I really that bored? No, surely I had better things to do - even if just read a novel on long loo breaks, and make a point of complaining about curries or a housemate's cooking to my boss.
So, I cannot deny the obvious. That all my Blitzin' is a form of repetitive behaviour, not just another innocent example of chess as a hobby. Repetitive behaviour, I know, is a way to force the universe, that so often feels - & is - beyond control, and chaotic, and dangerous, into safe and reliable patterns; it is a way to master a little corner of this vast space we float in and name it ours. Or: it is a way to create ontological security in a changeful, unrelable world. Still, I do not have OCD, I have a bad habit. I don't miss blitzin' at all when I don't do it, and if there's no internet around, I do not seek it out for that purpose. I do it when it's there - but a hell of a lot, and when I could be doing better things.
I sometimes wonder who the other players are, who anonymously blitz as guests on the ICC alongside me. There are some who never resign - they leave the programme as if their computer had been disconnected. There are those who always offer a draw before resigning, or lose on time, or deliberately play bad moves, those who pretend to be Bobby Fischer, and there's one who as soon as the game is finished censors each opponent from talking to him or challening him again. In a word - it is odd, very odd, that I have spent so many hours in the company of these hidden, fleeting creatures. That I, in fact, am one, and that no doubt at some point they wonder about me as I wonder about them. If you are a fellow blitzee, then I'm the guy who goes 1. d4 c5 2. Bf4 cxd4 3. Bxb8 Rxb8 4. Qxd4, threat 5. Qxa7. And I'm better than you.
Count up those files; 10,000? 100,000? 500,000? Even if you did do so, you will not witness me in that number: The count records not only chess moves, not just the time I have killed, but a mistaken choice of mine: to make myself into a drifting shadow. That tally counts my cowardice.
