My First Chess Club

Oshkosh, Wisconsin didn't have all that much in the way of chess in the 1970's, but there was a little chess club upstairs at the public library that my dad used to take me to when I was ten. All grown up in the picture are two of the kids who used to go there when I went. They were thirteen year olds then and regularly beat me at chess. They used to play me just to move up the "club ladder." But for some strange reason I never thought I was going to lose the next game. I continued to believe I would win the next game. It didn't matter how many times I lost. That and the fact that I loved the game is why I am currently in the top 100 female chess players in the country today, when I could barely win a game back then. Both of these chess players had far more chess talent than I did, but I had the drive and the desire to continue playing and studying the game. We had a reunion of the old chess club this summer in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and played a chess game in which you can observe a basic thinking error--that of thinking you are lost and losing the objecivity to see that you are still quite in the game.

Here in this position, after I played Ne4, he thought he had to give up his queen but he didn't. All I was threatening to do was mess up his pawn structure. After Ne4 he can just move his queen back to d1, then if I play bishop takes the knight or knight takes the knight on f3 he can recapture on f3 with his pawn on g2. His pawns will be doubled and he might not feel comfortable castling on the kingside but that is certainly not as bad as losing his queen. He pointed out later in the game that he actually wasn't down a whole queen because he got two pieces for the queen. But still. During the game, since it was the casual environment of a reunion of the old chess club, he said out loud that he had lost his queen no matter what he did. That wasn't true, but it ruins a chess game to start the post-mortem during the game.

I forgot that my friend from the chess club was tactical and could see pins and things, but the fact that he refused to move his knight when I played h6 threatening his knight reminded me. I can't capture the knight. The truth was I would have played h6 anyway because he was threatening to win a pawn. But still, this tactical ability on the part of my opponent explains why I was losing all the time to him when I was in the chess club as a kid. Tactics for me had to be learned through the repetitive tactics puzzles that I trained with.

Initiative in chess is calling the shots. In this game my opponent continually presented threats that forced me to respond. After being alerted to his tactical ability I took the time on every move to try and see what his threat was. There is a tendancy in tournament players to get lazy when playing the general public. My opponent had the initiative all game. But initiative alone will not win a game. If I had ignored his threats he might have won. If I had demanded to get back the initiative with an unsound move he might have won or at least gained the upper hand. But it was better to simply wait, answer his threats and be patient. My time would come and he would eventually run out of threats. Every chance I had I traded pieces to reduce his ability to come up with ideas.

I thought if he had played Rook takes b7 he could have harrassed me quite a bit. My plan if he did this was to trade the queen and the bishop for one of the rooks, which would be all I could get for them and then just queen the pawn. But he might have made a bid to stop my queening that pawn and so I might not have been able to do that plan, in which case it would have been two rooks vs a rook and two bishops. He would have been winning materially, and he might have even been able to queen his passed pawn on c6. He thought for a long time here and instead of Rook takes pawn he played pawn to c7. I knew I was ok then. I just block the pawn with my rook and answer his threat of Rb8 with Kd7. He has nothing and I can push that pawn. He still could trade off my queen and play to stop my rook from queening but it's only a matter of time until I get it queened.

What I have is chess skill from years of study, what my opponent has is natural talent. If he were to put time and effort into the game we would always have maintained that same distance in our abilities that we had at the chess club as kids together. It was lots of fun to play him again and it was interesting to see his ideas, as well as to observe the things that held him back. After the game he did an interview with me about our chess club as kids. Chess can create lifelong friendships, logic skills and lots of fun. I'm so glad my dad brought me to the library chess club in Oshkosh. If you have kids who play chess, see if you can find a local club to bring them to.