Chess at School

Sometime during the summer of 1980, I was vacationing in my Grandma's house together with my parents, uncles, aunties and a number of my cousins. Then one day my cousins decided to play a game called chess. This was the very first time I ever laid my eyes on a board game with curious looking pieces played in a 64 squared board with alternating white and green squares.

I was just an observer that time, intrigue by how the pieces moves. After a while somebody won (or was it a draw), and then they decided that they had had enough, so they put back the pieces inside the foldable chess board and stored it somewhere. That was my first ever encounter of a game that will soon made the biggest impact in my life.

But it took me another three years before I finally learned to play the game. Fast forward to June of 1983, it was just the first few days after the opening of the classes and everyone was still on a cleaning mode and we hardly had any classes at all, just the basic orientation thing and the class was dismissed early.

Since we had time, I convinced my friend that we should pay a visit to one of our classmates and hang out with him because he has a chess set and I thought it would be cool if he could teach us draughts so that we could play a few games of checkers (at that time I thought chess was too complex a game).

Up to this day I never knew why that thought entered my mind - 'to hang out with a mate who has a chess set and play a few games of checkers.' Perhaps because I saw Jom's chess board during the summer of '83, and that triggered the thought. So we went there, Jom taught us checkers, we played a few games and then went home. The virus hadn't yet infected me, but it has latched on to me.

Soon after that, we would occasionally play checkers in our house or at school with my classmates during lunchbreak or recess just to pass the time. Then one fine day while we were playing at home, mom passed by on her way out and she said what are you guys doing, we told her we were playing checkers, she shot back, why don't you play chess instead. I told her that it will fry our brain. She walk off without saying another word. But unbeknownst to her, she already planted an idea which I could not shake off. 'Why not learn to play chess indeed.' It wouldn't hurt to learn a new game.

A few days later I pestered my next door neighbor/classmate to teach me the game. He did. And at that very moment, the virus entered my blood stream (we call it - chess bug). The next day, at the crack of dawn, I knocked at my neighbors door and from that day onwards we played countless chess games, by the second week, I was already beating him consistently. I began to lose interest beating the same opponent over and over so I decided to take on Jom (slightly better than my next door classmate), but he too is finding it difficult to contain me.

After only one month, I had run out of opponents to play with. There was nobody in my school who wish to take me on. I had beaten every student who plays chess at school, the only thing left to beat is the teachers :):)

I also had an easy time with the majority of my chess-playing teachers, but I had this one teacher that out of 5 games we played, I only succeeded in beating him once. But instead of playing him to accelerate my chess knowledge, there is this one teacher (Soc-Sci) who always wanted to play with me even if he lost most of the time.

To add insult to injury, the Dean of our school (a priest) would sometimes snatch me in the middle of classes because he wants to play a game of chess. I was often the most requested chess player at school, at first I find it okay to escape class and play chess but later on I was bored to death because I didn't learn anything by beating the same player over and over. Instead of finding new meat, I was beating the same dead horse all the time.

I should've stopped playing with them and instead find a much more experienced player to play with, but how can I say no to my teacher and to the Dean of our school. I was trapped. Playing with the same group of dead beats, I stopped growing as a chess player and my ability stagnated.

It took me many years before I could rid myself of these feelings of injustice (forced to entertain the school authorities). Putting this on e-paper and publishing it online as a blog helps in releasing those long buried pent-up emotions, just to let it all out of my system. I also hope that my experience will directly or indirectly help someone out there who's walking the same path I took.

Postscript: My advise to anyone who might be experiencing the same thing, just say "NO" to them and make your stand. It took me many more years before I could realize and fulfill at least half of my potential. I believe that I could have accomplish more if these things hadn't happened to me during my formative years...