Pawn addiction helps me beat the lockdown blues
“Chess doesn’t drive people mad, it keeps mad people sane” — Bill Hartson
Welcome to life in the time of corona, where clichés can spread faster than infection. One particularly dominant variant suggests that by being deprived of some pleasures we have learnt to truly appreciate what “really matters”.
With holidays, restaurant trips, nights in the pub and outings to theatres and cinemas out of the equation in lockdown it’s been a time to recalibrate. We’ve clutched families tighter (purely metaphorically, officer), caught up with old friends on tolerably awkward Zoom calls, WhatsApped to the point of RSI and generally doubled-down on simple joys like petting the cat and a steaming cup of tea.
But do you know what, I don’t want to adjust to this new normal. I don’t want putting salt into the dishwasher to be a central part of my day’s personal highlights reel. To paraphrase Blur, “Modern pandemic life is rubbish”, and I want out.
Luckily, as the gloomy realities of lockdown bite I’ve found the perfect diversion — online chess.
While the world attempts to keep calm and carry on, I’m focused on my phone, fingers brushing quickly over the touchscreen as I try desperately to avoid being checkmated by a lightning-fast Indian opponent with a Spongebob Squarepants avatar. “Are you winning?” my wife asks, incredibly inconsiderately, seconds before Spongebob, my mocking yellow nemesis, puts me to the sword again. I let out an irritated grunt in reply and hit the rematch button, the perky chime of a new game prompting a conditioned response as she sighs and reaches for her book. She must be so glad she married me.
Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby’s paean to football and obsession, begins: “It’s in there all the time, looking for a way out”. Chess has been in me since the age of seven when I was taught the moves by my dad on a small magnetic set. At 34 years it’s been by far my longest relationship and, despite a brief cooling-off period when I went to university and thoughts of alcohol, seminars, and the opposite sex supplanted the finer points of the French Defence, we’ve managed to keep things remarkably fresh.
I might not be the Arsenal of the chess world — but I have a knack for coaching others, win the majority of games I play and, just occasionally, give master-level players a serious case of the chequered heebie-jeebies.
The fog of Covid, coupled with the surprise success of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, has been a boon for the game, with chess sets becoming Christmas 2020’s Buzz Lightyear, and websites like chess.com, Lichess and Chess24 experiencing a surge of new members. With so many subscribers online chess is a 24/7 world where, at any time of day, you’re only a few taps or clicks away from a new glorious victory or teeth-gnashing defeat.
Online chess understands me. It never questions why I get grumpy or distracted from a task in hand, nor turns me down if I suggest a five-minute game in the middle of the night. Plus when this locked-down world feels too much, there’s always a variety of tournaments, blitz battles and tactics challenges to spice up our time together.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife and there’s nobody I’d rather stand beside in the face of any global plague, or sit with through another depressing government briefing. Yet Covid is using up our reserves of tolerance at a worryingly fast rate, not to mention boxsets. Tales of work don’t have quite the same mystique as they once did — unsurprising given we can hear each other’s every keystroke and conference call. And who needs to know what Sue from HR had for lunch?
At the end of the day, immersed in my alternative reality of bishops and kings I can experience triumphs unparalleled in this normal world. The family quiz we did by video call was great fun, sure, but was it really as good as beating that Trump fan from Idaho while sat on the toilet? And can those scenic winter walks really match the golden streak of (a magnificent) seven straight wins chalked up from the safety of my bathtub?
Yet, as with any addiction there is guilt. Yesterday I reviewed one of my chess profiles and it informed me I had been playing for many more hours than I care to share — certainly far longer than I’ve spent tidying the bathroom and running loops around the park. If I’d have channelled that time differently (I refuse to say more wisely) I could be fluent in Mandarin by now, have read umpteen classic novels or finally learnt the guitar that sits redundantly in our living room.
However, as I pored over those chess stats (1,775 games, 960 wins, 707 losses and 108 draws in case you’re interested) it was hard to ignore a perverse sense of pride. At a time when line charts are too often accompanied by trepidation and barely conceivable human tragedy, my chess rating graph with its comforting peaks and dramatic troughs (usually the result of an ill-advised late-night blitz binge) is my source of contentment, a reminder that there’s always another challenge, another game to play.
So what better way of escaping the unacceptable realities of a rogue pathogen, a weary psyche, and a middle-aged body unsculpted by lockdown, than by plugging myself into the chess Matrix where I can be a fresh-faced Dorian Gray of the 64 squares forever.
Now where did my wife go?
Chris Beckett is a writer and chess coach; https://lichess.org/@/chrisbeckett
