YIC and chess

A Night at the Youth Centre

 

Last night volunteering at the Youth Impact Centre was like trying to keep an undersized lid on a barrel full of monkeys. Silvie, as so often, spent the whole evening writing a story. This time it was fiction, the story of a boy named Tommy (nothing to do with her brother or his friend, also named Tommy). Tomaso, though, was ever in the forefront of the hijinks. The older teens were stuck to the computers but were constantly wandering in and out. I had to dust off and enforce Dom's old rule that you are either here or you are gone for the evening, not both. I reduced the inflow and outflow with a great effort, in the face of protests that the new pastor running the center does not care about that rule.

As soon as I got a handle on the big kids, I had to turn to the little ones who were climbing the furniture or running around bumping into objects and people. A wild ping pong game went on among the pre-teens, boys against boys and then girls against girls, where the ball rarely came close to hitting the table. A pool game on the newly repaired billiard table was in constant danger of being used as a convenient drink holder. One kid went behind the counter and helped herself to the candy bars. I really missed my co-volunteer, Stu, a retired teacher who can lay down the law on kids like nobody's business, who was on vacation this week. The only other adult, Gord, did turn up, though, and helped me out a little.

While doing all this, I was playing a game of chess with Gord. He is an experienced club player who was a member years ago of the Hamilton Chess Club and has played tournaments in Toronto. He has a much superior knowledge of the openings. I know them maybe four or five moves deep, but he is still on familiar ground eight or ten moves into the game. With that advantage, he beats me a good nine out of ten times we play. In fact before last night I only recall beating him twice.

My first win was a long rook and pawn end game that kept us an hour past the normal 10 o'clock closing time. It was a tense, suspenseful game, but I was sharp that night. The young ones were gone and there were about a half dozen adult kibitzers hanging about watching the board. Toward the end, when Gord left for a few minutes the audience were convinced I was done for. They tried to prove it to me but I said confidently that was a won game. With my finger I pointed out a sacrifice of my passed center pawn followed by a five move maneuver of my rook around his position that assured my other pawn would be promoted. Sure enough, when he returned he resigned after the predicted five moves.

One of my finest hours.

The other win happened after he fell into an opening trap and lost a minor piece for two pawns. Playing accurately, I tightened a noose around his center position. When he resigned I had almost achieved Zugzwang.

The last few games Gord and I played were complete blunderfests. It was the man who makes the last error loses, with my errors outnumbering his by two to one. It is extremely difficult to play with so many interruptions. We should call this little Friday evening "The Ironman Chess Club." With all the distractions, noise and shouting going on while playing a game it is not unlike running a hundred yard dash while fighting the current of a knee-deep torrent. Even a fairly simple game leaves you depleted, mentally and physically.

What was astonishing was that last night's game was accurate. No obvious mistakes were made on either side, as far as I could see. I was white in a Ruy Lopez opening, and he steered me into a variation that was new for me and advantageous for him. Then, intentionally or not, he traded off my knights. This is a ploy that Stu learned a year ago after many, many losses. No doubt this information had communicated itself to Gord.

Ever since I played for the Ancaster High School chess team I was wicked with my knights and helpless without them. When Stu learned my fatal flaw he traded off my knights from the board early, and he started winning every game. I got around this by three months of almost-daily training. I played against a 1900 rated Chessmaster 9000 computer opponent that favored its knights. This meant that it went through every hoop it could calculate to get my knights off the board in exchange for bishops or the three pawn equivalent.

I lost every game against this automated knight hog at first, but I did not care. I was not going to suffer the humiliation of losing against somebody who believes in reincarnation and swallows New Age pap whole. Gradually I learned to play well without my knights. I had to figure out the rather strange openings this opponent liked. After endless defeats, I at last started to win fairly regularly. In time I lost interest in playing with this character, an algorithm that had been given by the game designers a black face. I had no success with the other computer opponent at that level, a Caucasian female. She used a different strategy. Maybe I am just more racist than I am sexist, or maybe my natural level is an 1800 rating, or lower. But as far as Stu was concerned the damage of that four months was done. Ever since, though I never practice, I beat him almost every time.

After the opening in last night's game it resolved into a position with both queens and all four rooks still in play, one of the most difficult and unpredictable kinds of endgame. One slip and you are dead. Playing it is like juggling flaming swords while wearing flammable clothing. Then the distractions got worse. The telephones went dead and the teens at the computer terminals switched over to instant messaging to communicate with friends and parents. I had to throw out one nine-year-old because he had turned a pool match into an explosive sort of bowling game on the hardwood floor.

Concentrating on the game, I realized that without a functioning phone my one recourse in the event of another confrontation, calling the police, was out of the question. Then, with a chill, I remembered that this pastor is a former rock musician and mixed martial artist who is teaching these kids and teens a deadly new form of hand-to-hand combat, Jeet Kung Fu, that makes the Judo I learned as a kid look as mild as needlework. Silvie is his most enthusiastic student. Fortunately, she was the one kid I did not have to worry about. She only attacks me, arms flailing, when I go against anything she wants, and now she wanted to write.

Without meaning to, I gave up a pawn in exchange for the often ephemeral strategic advantage of having Gord's queen on the edge while mine was more centrally located. I got an open file with a rook looking down the center, and he cleverly counterattacked, threatening mate on my first rank, as well as pinning a rook in the center against my king. I ignored that. I honestly do not know how I did it, but while parrying these blows I won the exchange of a rook for a minor piece, then, in the last move of the game, suspecting some kind of deep trap, I accepted his offer of a free knight. No, no trap, he just resigned. Examining the position together, we agreed that there were no prospects for him. How had that happened?

I went home plagued with that same question, how did I do that? Why can I not be like that all the time? Normally, I collapse under pressure. In the best of times -- and this was a rainy, migrainy day -- I slip up. Blunders are the rule, not the exception. Where did I get the alertness to beat a better player while keeping the wherewithal to handle a room full of about thirty rowdy kids, the kind of job that I have no experience or training for? On top of all that, I just went on a new diet that has been making me slightly nauseated much of the time. Why did none of that tell on me?

I was still wondering as I dropped off to sleep. This morning I woke with an answer in mind: the day before I had gone through the long obligatory prayer followed by an ardent recital of the Tablet of Ahmad. Had not done that for a while. Maybe it was just the power of powerful prayers. I thought of the time the Master was walking with H.C. Ives and the latter was thinking how frail, old and sick He was when He suddenly picked him up like a baby and carried him up a long flight of stairs. There is no accounting for divine confirmations.