I love chess.  

I played a lot of chess when young. My teachers were my parents, who both played pretty well, though Ma would almost always win against Dad. This was in part due to her skill in arranging devilishly tricky positional traps; but brother Bala and I soon learned, from observation, that Ma was even more skilful in quietly filching one or two of Dad’s pawns or even an occasional bishop or rook while he— innocent, trusting, absent-minded man that he was—was engrossed lighting a cigarette or had wandered off to refill his coffee cup or glass of rum.  Only rarely did Dad notice something was amiss when he came back to the chess-board and found his army depleted of key warriors;  but even when he did, his grumblings and suspicious inquiries were usually dismissed by Ma as the protestations so typically made by the vanquished.

Alas, Dad and Ma stopped playing chess altogether after a particularly incendiary argument following Dad’s  catching Ma red-handed while she was rather over-ambitiously in the process of filching his queen. But Bala and I kept playing, well into adulthood.

I even won a small college tournament in 1976 in Shillong (much to everyone’s amazement, most of all my own). But after that the only time I played regularly for any period of time was in 1980, when I was posted in Thoothukudi (then Tuticorin) as a probationary officer with the State Bank of Travancore along with my friend and colleague probationer,  Anantharamakrishnan. He was a superb chess player.  I remember we kept progressive score in a register; we must have played at least 300 games during the  four or five months we were together, and at the end of it he led by a comfortable 50 games or more. I learned a lot from Ananth in those games…he was unbeatable in the end-games, while I liked to think I had a small edge in strategic play (though often he proved me wrong).

Anyway, to drag this rant back to the topic from which I was led astray by myself…

Nowadays I only play online chess, at https://chess.com, where I registered for free in May 2023.

I mainly play two kinds of chess games: (1) ‘rapid’ 10-minute games against human beings, and (2) time-unlimited games against bots and the occasional human. 

I must mention – especially for those among you, O Sinless Readers, who are unfamiliar with chess – that it’s an incredibly addictive game. To give you an idea of how addictive it is: since I registered on chess.com, I’ve played 1196 games —which means I’ve  played two games daily on average over the last 18 months!

By way of lame excuse for all this time goofing off: chess is addictive because it’s purely a battle of minds. Chess doesn’t require physical strength and agility, but it’s as demanding, gruelling, ruthless and unforgiving as boxing or tennis or fencing.  If you lose at chess, there’s no way you can blame it on ‘bad luck’. You lost simply because your opponent played better than you. And that wounds the ego! So, being human, you want revenge…and you at once play another game…and another…And if you win, the exultation and ego-boost is so intense you want to play again…and again…

 I find the ‘rapid’ 10-minute games against humans exciting—especially when I win, naturally. Usually I leave it to the algorithm to select an opponent, which it does based on our levels of proficiency (with a score that oscillates wildly between 1100 and 1300 I’m somewhere between advanced-beginner and low-intermediate levels). These rapid games are incredibly challenging because I’d never ever played 10-minute chess games before; in the old days, a game would usually last an hour or more. In fact, I’m still not accustomed to the time pressure; the unnerving sight of that damned clock on the side of the virtual chess-board ticking down my 10 minutes of playing time makes it all too easy for me to commit more than my usual share of colossal blunders.  Quite often, I still run out of time and lose from winning positions.

But these rapid games are also interesting, because I get to play people from all over the world, from Australia to Argentina, Brazil to Britain, Pakistan to Peru, Tanzania to Turkiye to Taiwan.  (You can usually tell where a player is from by the flag which shows by default next to his/her name or chosen moniker; though some prefer to conceal their nationalities).

 The virtual game-board on chess.com allows you to ‘chat’ with the opponent while playing. But usually I prefer playing in silence—primarily because I don’t want to be distracted with the clock e-ticking away as I struggle to avoid blundering every third move.

But sometimes, I do type in a word or three…like when my opponent wins after superb play, or when I empathize with my opponent – like today when, after chasing my king all over the board and to the verge of checkmate, my New Zealand opponent committed a goof-up that I would have been proud of and promptly resigned. “Sorry, happens to me all the time,” I wrote, and received a thumbs-up and rueful grin in reply.  

Once in a while I even get into short friendly chats with my opponents.  There was this very good player from the USA—I think of her as ‘her’ because of her moniker which was distinctly female, though of course you never know on the Net—who had slowly but surely cornered  me in the game, till she moved her queen invitingly to a position where I could capture it with my pawn.

Now that’s the kind of blunder I commit quite routinely, so I typed in: “Your Q in peril!”

To which she replied: “Oh nooooooo!”

So after a few second’s thought I moved my knight or something (sparing her queen), and much to my amusement she responded: “I love you!” and moved her queen out of danger. I was less amused when she went on to win that game; but then she sent me a ‘friend’ request which I accepted, and we still play the occasional unlimited-time (3-days) game. I usually lose, but the games are great.

I’ve also faced online abuse a couple of times.

The first time was really weird.  It was a good game, a close game.  I lost the game when I ran out of time after a hell of a fight; and I was surveying the carnage of the end-position when I realized my opponent had typed in a remark.

Our brief and educative exchange went like this (I call him ‘O’ for opponent):

O: You lost, hahaha.  Lost. Loser

Me: Yes I did! Good game 🙂

O: Loser, hehe. You stupid loser

Me: ??

O:  Hehe loser.

Me: Hey, lighten up, you won! (this was my last response)

O: Lose, losing always. Loser!

O: Dirty loser. Cowerd (sic)

O: Why you not sayin aniting? Loser, useless loser

O:  Haha basterd Indie loser (sic)

O: You Niger hehe

O: Niger loser

O: Haha Niger niger niger niger

At which point I disconnected.

Sure, it was a little unpleasant…but it was also a little fascinating.

I was particularly intrigued by the term ‘Niger’.  It took a while for me to realize I wasn’t being likened to the great West African river.

Niger was a racial slur. I was being called ‘Nigger’.

Quite honestly, Gentle Reader, I wasn’t offended as much as I was amused by the slur. I’ve known all manner of taunts and epithets since childhood, when I was a small, short, fat, dark, bespectacled Tamilian schooling in Shillong. Fatty, tubby, shorty, four-eyes, Madrasee, kallu, blackie, darkie…these are some of the kinder names I’ve been called in my time, and I learned to take them in my stride, and to return as rich and graphic compliments as I got when the occasion demanded.  On the very rare occasions in schooldays when the epithets got really personal and offensive,  I even did what the informal honour-code of school demanded: challenged and fought with my persecutor after class hours on the lower football field. (I might add that I’m now a tall, skinny, ageing, dark, cadaverous, balding bespectacled Tamilian gathering PM2.5 dust in Dilli, and the taunts and epithets are much rarer, for which I am glad…especially because that lower football field is 2000 km away. )

But I’d never been called ‘Nigger’ before.  

I’ve therefore added this latest curse-word to the others that I wear as a garland of honour, and I continue to play chess with humans online.

And then there are the chess bots.

 You have all kinds of bots that you can play on chess.com: they’ve got interesting names, and even profile photos, and they’re grouped in different levels of proficiency to help you choose whom to play.

These bots are amazing characters.  They joke. They banter. Some bots heckle you. Others laugh at you. Some make sarcastic remarks about your last move. Some are moody and depressed about life in general, and especially about losing to you.

Here are a few memorable bots I’ve played with, with some choice quotes:

Nefertiti  the Cat: Nefertiti was distinctly catty, in looks and in speech. Her opening greeting was: “I can’t wait for this game to be over so I can be alone.” (It’s a hell of a discouraging thing for any man to hear from any woman he’s just met…even if she’s a chess bot). Nefertiti was also very difficult to beat. “Stay in your lane. Which isn’t chess, clearly.” This was what she advised me, shortly before winning the game with a devastating attack.

Ajax the Greek warrior: Ajax was a mean bot. His remark after crushing me in less than 15 moves: “Get back to school. I know a pretty good one in Athens.”

Grandpa Gambit: Grandpa was a brilliant player. Alas, he was also garrulous, like most grandpas. He talked incessantly; he talked even more than I do in my anec-dotage.  Mercifully, Grandpa was good-natured, like P G Wodehouse’s Oldest Member in the Golf Glub. Usually he conversed with himself, that too in lengthy paragraphs, while I was busy trying, without much success, to avoid checkmate.

Sample this opening remark from Grandpa after I made my first move in a game:

 “Now, the French opening…that’s a tricky one. I remember playing against a kid when I was a young boy, and she was a real French fanatic.  She opened with it every single game. So I decided to surprise her and play the French myself. But wouldn’t you know, she saw right through my plan and countered with a clever move. I was flabbergasted! But I gotta hand it to her, she knew how to baguette her way out of a tough situation!”

And another time, when I was staring in disbelief and despair at the devastated ruins of what was left of my chess army and realized checkmate was certain whatever I did, the old geezer prattled cheerfully as follows:

“I remember playing against this young whippersnapper in San Antonio back in ’72. I checkmated him and thought that was the end of it. But then, wouldn’t you know it, he goes on to win the US Championship six times! I guess I must have taught him a thing or two, eh? I’m just glad I could help the kid out.”

Every game with Grandpa Gambit was like being whirled, squeezed and hammered flat by industrial machinery before being finally roasted in a high-temperature kiln. But listening to Grandpa (or rather, reading him) made it all worth it.

I still miss Grandpa Gambit. As I miss Nefertiti, and all the other bots of the olden days.

You see, O Dear Patient Reader, the old chess bots have all gone forever…gone the way of all mortal flesh (or rather, the way of all photons and baryons and leptons, long-lived though they might be). They’ve been replaced by new chess bots who, though excellent chess players, hardly talk. And when these newcomer chess bots do talk, their converse is shallow, uninspiring, boring…these new bots somehow lack the originality, the wit, the vulnerabilities, the goofiness, the humanity and individuality of their bot-ancestors.

There’s an insipid, humourless, sameness about all these new bots; they’re almost like…well… Woke bots. 

Well…I guess maybe these new bots are only mirroring what’s happening nowadays to human societies across the world.

c’est la vie

Oh, in case you play chess… let’s have a game, do look out for me, a.k.a Alambusa, at https://chess.com/.