Dreaming Chess

It was the tournament in Los Angeles, July 2000. I know it was, because my daughter was born in 2000, in September, so it had to be July, because it was so unfathomably hot, and I was seven months pregnant. And I know it was a huge tournament, because there was $5,000 prize money, and that was the lowest prize in the booster section! (I used to hate being in the booster section. Recollections of the waitresses at Denny's offering me the booster chair and how insulted I felt then. Same thing.)

I know it was $5,000 prize money because all I could think about during the game was what I was going to do with all that money. (A trip to Paris, definitely) That was all I could think about during the game. Which is funny, because leading up to the game I had studied so much chess, including chess lessons with Jeremy Silman where he gave me the best rootbeer I had ever tried. I still can't remember the name of it, but he swore that rootbeer would keep me coming back for lessons. He used to give these really entertaining chess lectures at Los Angeles tournaments that were just like his books. He was probably the best teacher I had ever had, and the rootbeer was really good. But I think the reason the rootbeer didn't keep me coming back was what happened to my brain after studying chess more intensely than I ever had in my life. (I wanted that $5,000)

I was carrying a binder that contained pages and pages of notes and a three hole punch chess board sheet I had purchased around with me everywhere I went. I would study opening theory in the doctor's office while I waited. I would study while my son Isaac (then three) went on his playdates at the park while the other moms socialized. I would study chess in the bathtub, while falling asleep, in the morning with my coffee, and while my husband told me about his day. Then something evil began to happen. I couldn't stop calculating chess positions!

I would try to take a nap, and I couldn't stop calculating. When I fell asleep, I would dream chess positions. It was like I had turned on a switch and couldn't turn it off. I could get no rest. I felt an exhaustion I had never felt, where even sleep was exhausting because my brain was working very hard during my dreams to calculate long complex tactical combinations that were half real, and half surreal. The breaking point came when my three year old wouldn't take a nap (he never would) and I really needed one in the middle of the day. "Please," I begged him,"Please, just let me take a nap. I'm going to take a nap now. Just watch TV, and don't do anything." When I woke up a half hour later from playing the Ricthter-Rauzer Variation of the Sheveningen in my sleep and I walked into the living room to find that Isaac had poured cereal and milk all over one of those "little tyke" play tables, all over the floor, and was giggling about it. Isaac was not a three year old who should be left alone for even five minutes, let alone thirty! I had one of those moments. One of those parenting moments.

So I said enough! Chess makes you insane! I stopped studying, waddled into the very huge tournament at the Wyndham hotel near the Los Angeles Airport, and was drawn out of my winning chances and my dreams of Paris in game one, with a three move repetition played by then nine year old Vanessa West, who nine years later was number seven in the country for chess girls under twenty one.