- Joined
- Nov 21, 2019
- Messages
- 6,792
- Reaction score
- 124,314
- Points
- 11
- Age
- 55
- Location
- Орёл
- 💎VM
- 432,548.00
- New country
- 🌐Единия
- Enneatype
- 5 (?)
- Gender
- Male
- Ashram resident
- Yes
- Chess level
- Good player
I was 5 years old when I saw adults playing chess.
They sat motionless, thinking hard, and made a move.
I was born in a settlement in the Far North (near the Laptev Sea, between the Lena and Yana Rivers, which flow into that sea—essentially into the Arctic Ocean). Life was different there—a small-settlement kind of life, where doors were hardly ever locked. Children played wherever they wanted, and people’s lives were an open book. Some apartments were often simply like thoroughfares, where you could have both a “chess tournament” and a “basketball court”...
It wasn’t like now—everyone stays in their apartments, everyone is afraid....
So, at the age of 5, I simply saw people playing chess.
Yes, it was something like this film: Chess - Chess Section Help
My father taught me how to move the pieces. I started playing.
And I couldn’t understand why I was losing.
For example, when playing football in the settlement, I sometimes lost and sometimes won. I knew what I had to do: be faster and more agile... But here I didn’t understand the logic of the game. I was always beaten.
There was something I didn’t understand.
It infuriated me.
I move the pieces like everyone else, I do everything correctly, the pawn moves forward, the knight moves in an L-shape—what’s wrong?
Let me remind you—I was 5 years old.
I didn’t like losing; I didn’t like being unable to do something.
I could never allow myself to say, “Yes, you couldn’t do it, just leave it—there are plenty of other interesting things in the world.”
No, that wasn’t me.
Some powerful inner desire of mine activated an ancient mechanism inside me that kept pushing me to think about it, analyze it, immerse myself in it, gnaw into it.... The number of attempts didn’t matter to me. Nothing mattered to me at all. Except the goal.
I cried and whined after every loss.
Something inside me prayed, asking for help in understanding what was hidden from me in this game, what I had to understand so that I could win too...
And then the meaning of chess revealed itself to me. I understood that before you checkmate the king and achieve final victory, you must win hundreds of smaller victories, taking pieces, gaining a favorable position, and so on.
And suddenly I won.
Of course, at first there were few such victories. And they were all because a 5-year-old child was sitting across from an adult, and the adult was playing without really thinking.
But soon I was beating adults who played seriously.
They were surprised. At first I saw how outraged they were because they had lost to a child. But then I increasingly saw admiration in their emotions. They had actually lost to a child! Their desire to admire that fact overcame their pride
At school, older students played with me during breaks. Something like, “Can this rookie really beat me?....”
And I won.
My game was intuitive.
I didn’t study. Although I did solve a few chess puzzles. They were printed in magazines. You know the kind—checkmate in four moves, and so on.
Sometimes the puzzles were difficult. I could walk around school all day thinking about one. And when I came home from school, I would sit down and solve it without even taking off my school uniform.
And it was immensely satisfying to tell my father, who had returned from his shift at the mine, “I found the answer!”
At school, I came second in chess. All the students from every class played. As far as I remember, children from other settlements came too.
In the final, I was beaten by a boy who had recently moved to the settlement from “the mainland”
And he studied chess professionally.
I wanted to castle. I reached for the rook. It turned out that, “according to the official rules,” you can’t castle that way. Apparently, you have to touch the king first and then the rook... But once you touch a piece, you have to move it!
I was outraged!
I simply wanted to castle, the way I had always done it when playing before, the way I knew how.
But the boy insisted. He called over some man who was in charge of the competition.
The man confirmed it.
I stupidly ruined the game. I didn’t castle, lost a move, and placed the rook completely in the wrong spot...
Second place was good too, I told myself to calm down.
Perhaps if I had studied chess professionally, I would have achieved more. But chess no longer had any grand purpose for me, as it did, for example, for the heroine of the film whose link I posted above.
After moving to Oryol, I also took part in school competitions there. It was probably around fifth grade.
And once again, second place. Again, I was beaten by a boy who studied it professionally.
I learned from him where he attended lessons. It turned out that classes were held at the same school as an extracurricular activity after lessons. I attended with him for a little while. It was fun. A grandmaster analyzed combinations and games by great players on a board with magnetic chess pieces...
And I was like, “You could do that?...” I had missed so much!
Why am I telling you this?
Yes, you can learn to play chess.
But I didn’t learn. I UNDERSTOOD it.
I played ONLY intuitively.
Yes—second place. But my (intuitive) game shows how strong you really are. Yes, you can memorize all those games, defenses, and attacks... But then it is no longer intuitive play. They are no longer chess players, but robots that have uploaded thousands of different successful moves into themselves... And then they simply play them mechanically.
The BEAUTY of the game is lost.
Don’t think I am belittling the dignity and importance of studying chess so deeply that everything is memorized.
No.
That is the role of truly brilliant chess players.
They were ready to devote their lives to it.
I simply wasn’t ready to take that step.
They sat motionless, thinking hard, and made a move.
I was born in a settlement in the Far North (near the Laptev Sea, between the Lena and Yana Rivers, which flow into that sea—essentially into the Arctic Ocean). Life was different there—a small-settlement kind of life, where doors were hardly ever locked. Children played wherever they wanted, and people’s lives were an open book. Some apartments were often simply like thoroughfares, where you could have both a “chess tournament” and a “basketball court”...
It wasn’t like now—everyone stays in their apartments, everyone is afraid....
So, at the age of 5, I simply saw people playing chess.
Yes, it was something like this film: Chess - Chess Section Help
My father taught me how to move the pieces. I started playing.
And I couldn’t understand why I was losing.
For example, when playing football in the settlement, I sometimes lost and sometimes won. I knew what I had to do: be faster and more agile... But here I didn’t understand the logic of the game. I was always beaten.
There was something I didn’t understand.
It infuriated me.
I move the pieces like everyone else, I do everything correctly, the pawn moves forward, the knight moves in an L-shape—what’s wrong?
Let me remind you—I was 5 years old.
I didn’t like losing; I didn’t like being unable to do something.
I could never allow myself to say, “Yes, you couldn’t do it, just leave it—there are plenty of other interesting things in the world.”
No, that wasn’t me.
Some powerful inner desire of mine activated an ancient mechanism inside me that kept pushing me to think about it, analyze it, immerse myself in it, gnaw into it.... The number of attempts didn’t matter to me. Nothing mattered to me at all. Except the goal.
I cried and whined after every loss.
Something inside me prayed, asking for help in understanding what was hidden from me in this game, what I had to understand so that I could win too...
And then the meaning of chess revealed itself to me. I understood that before you checkmate the king and achieve final victory, you must win hundreds of smaller victories, taking pieces, gaining a favorable position, and so on.
And suddenly I won.
Of course, at first there were few such victories. And they were all because a 5-year-old child was sitting across from an adult, and the adult was playing without really thinking.
But soon I was beating adults who played seriously.
They were surprised. At first I saw how outraged they were because they had lost to a child. But then I increasingly saw admiration in their emotions. They had actually lost to a child! Their desire to admire that fact overcame their pride
At school, older students played with me during breaks. Something like, “Can this rookie really beat me?....”
And I won.
My game was intuitive.
I didn’t study. Although I did solve a few chess puzzles. They were printed in magazines. You know the kind—checkmate in four moves, and so on.
Sometimes the puzzles were difficult. I could walk around school all day thinking about one. And when I came home from school, I would sit down and solve it without even taking off my school uniform.
And it was immensely satisfying to tell my father, who had returned from his shift at the mine, “I found the answer!”
At school, I came second in chess. All the students from every class played. As far as I remember, children from other settlements came too.
In the final, I was beaten by a boy who had recently moved to the settlement from “the mainland”
And he studied chess professionally.
I wanted to castle. I reached for the rook. It turned out that, “according to the official rules,” you can’t castle that way. Apparently, you have to touch the king first and then the rook... But once you touch a piece, you have to move it!
I was outraged!
I simply wanted to castle, the way I had always done it when playing before, the way I knew how.
But the boy insisted. He called over some man who was in charge of the competition.
The man confirmed it.
I stupidly ruined the game. I didn’t castle, lost a move, and placed the rook completely in the wrong spot...
Second place was good too, I told myself to calm down.
Perhaps if I had studied chess professionally, I would have achieved more. But chess no longer had any grand purpose for me, as it did, for example, for the heroine of the film whose link I posted above.
After moving to Oryol, I also took part in school competitions there. It was probably around fifth grade.
And once again, second place. Again, I was beaten by a boy who studied it professionally.
I learned from him where he attended lessons. It turned out that classes were held at the same school as an extracurricular activity after lessons. I attended with him for a little while. It was fun. A grandmaster analyzed combinations and games by great players on a board with magnetic chess pieces...
And I was like, “You could do that?...” I had missed so much!
Why am I telling you this?
Yes, you can learn to play chess.
But I didn’t learn. I UNDERSTOOD it.
I played ONLY intuitively.
Yes—second place. But my (intuitive) game shows how strong you really are. Yes, you can memorize all those games, defenses, and attacks... But then it is no longer intuitive play. They are no longer chess players, but robots that have uploaded thousands of different successful moves into themselves... And then they simply play them mechanically.
The BEAUTY of the game is lost.
Don’t think I am belittling the dignity and importance of studying chess so deeply that everything is memorized.
No.
That is the role of truly brilliant chess players.
They were ready to devote their lives to it.
I simply wasn’t ready to take that step.
