Tommy C's Blog

The man sat next to me - haphazardly dressed in a badly torn and badly patterned jumper, a Star Trek t-shirt partially visible beneath it, tucked into his ill-fitting tracksuit bottoms - is gesturing wildly. Applause, thumbs up, even a little bow - which vaguely resembles praying, too. It's the first round of the Portsmouth Chess Congress, and his position is getting torn apart by his sharp, composed opponent. A few moves ago, he was rubbing at his stubble, coughing these little, irritating coughs, clamping his balding head in his pudgy fingers. But now he's accepted his fate, as if a crude bull thankfully put out of his misery by the swift, sophisticated sword of a master matador.

This is why I quit chess tournaments, I remind myself. The ludicrous myths that circulate in and out of them, as if even at our mediocre level, a moment of magic was only a few moves away. Twinned with that, the strange shame, where fears of looking stupid make grown-men perform such rituals of understanding, and act complicitly in their own downfall. Still, I think, at least it's cold, at least it's February - so the big airy hall where we play contains nothing like the smell of the sweaty, summer events. Even if the guy two boards along sat opposite clearly has a passion for curry far greater than his passion for cleanliness.

Almost five hours later, and I've finally lost my game. It's 11.15, and it's Friday night, and the dark city has been circulating away crazily in pubs, clubs and parties, for all that it's worth, for hours and hours. I wait twenty minutes for a cab and the list of grim reasons for quitting tournament chess seems to grow. How did I forget? What I am doing here?

A few rounds later on and I face the same player - same jumper - I was sat next to on the Friday night. A change of t-shirt though. He passes me a note: "I'm deaf", it reads, and I feel like an idiot for not realising that before. It even says next to his name on the tournament pairings. Hence the coughing, hence the signalling. And by this time I've started winning, and telling myself that Of course, I love chess tournaments, I must do more of this! Why did I leave it so long?

Half-way through the game and I'm taking control of the position; my opponent's head looks like it'll be locked in his hands for quite a while, so I take a walk through the other sections. Down in the Minor section there are a few girls in their late-teens or perhaps early twenties; their new cleavages, nicely displayed in the latest high-street tops, must be torture for the fat, old, lop-sided men sat dribbling opposite them. Why weren't their girls like that around when I was a junior? I thought. But of course there were. Emelia, Shelly, Lynsey - I can even recall some names, and that I was always too red-faced when talking to them. And now - there in my shabby jumper, unshaven and putting on a belly, close to thirty - now I'm just another one of the weirdo's who they ignore in tournaments. Just another reason they'll have to quit the scene when an adult life of family and work takes their time over, and, in their new tiredness, they begin to look for excuses to grow-up and get-wise and get away.

So what am I doing here? Maybe I belong here, I think, as my deaf opponent resigns. We conduct a post-mortem on the game after in improvised sign-language, and I realise I like the guy.

When I find out my next opponent, though, I'm terrified. A positive mood is nowhere, nowhere at all, because, well, just how old is he? Maybe double figures, maybe eight, even six... No, no-one six years old could have won in such style as he did, in the previous round against such an experienced, strong opponent. I shake his tiny hand, and look across at those big ears, little round glasses, that fresh, pale face and pre-pubescent hair-cut - whatever age he is, it's the age where a calculated personal style doesn't matter, doesn't register. Everyone in the universe must like him, everyone, at least for another year, maybe two.

Terrified: lose, and I'm a laughing stock. Win, and I'm cruel. Offer an early draw, and I'm patronising and anti-competitive. What to play for? A win, I decide, and my method is cruel: I cut down any active, attacking possibilities for him, frustrate his youthful, optimistic impulses. Soon, he blunders away a pawn, soon his pieces are getting boxed in, another pawn is vulnerable, and my pieces are poised for a slow invasion. He grows despondant as I gradually poison him. He looks down onto his scorepad, there on his little lap, scribbles a black shape on the back of it. Is that water across his eyes? He fidgets glumly; maybe just tired. I am too, but this is no draw. It's mate, soon.

We shake hands after. He tells me he is ten. Ten. And at around the playing standard I was at 14 or 15, I estimate. A prodigy? A future Grandmaster? A future World Champion? Who knows, but probably not. He clearly loves to attack, push the pieces out into the board, as proud as an army, swoop them down the diaganols like hawks or missiles, and along the ranks like unstoppable tanks, to get at the cornered enemy king - but not much else.

So here he is amongst us strange men, at almost 11pm on a Saturday night, in an alien, cold unfriendly city. Here he is, an innocent and pleasant child, an optimistic and fluent attacker, and I ask myself a question that's yet, I imagine, to even remotely cross his mind: where will you be in another ten years? Or twenty? Still here, after the bored girls have all departed, and when - unlike the stomatch - the talent has stopped growing? Still vainly here searching for that one great game, telling himself how it might have been? And like me, unkindly competitive? Or gesturing as if in the company of genius - while watching, with a speechless sadness, the next generation file in?