You Will Always Be A Loser
I've played 13,767 games of online chess since July 12th, 2020. In rapid time controls (15 minutes or less) I'm better than 73% of all the players on lichess.org. It's important to note that I am not very good at chess. The skill levels as you improve have a logarithmic curve. The beginners are significantly worse than the players slightly better than them, the intermediate players much better than that, the solid players a decent amount better than that, and then, at the top, the Truly Good players. When I go to Washington Square Park in Manhattan I lose to the hustlers most of the time and find great joy in my rare victories. I'm just good enough to know that they're mostly solid players, but not actually special. This is my curse. I'm just okay enough to know the difference between me and everyone better than me.
I learned chess as a child from my father and played a decent amount until I was about 12. It's no coincidence that this was also the year I got my first electric guitar, I was the best player in my middle school as evidenced by back to back year-end tournament wins in 7th and 8th grade. When the chess club would travel to another school to play against them I would often be pitted against some other young upstart and I'd want to make the faculty advisor (Mr. Gutchell, social studies) proud by crushing the other campus's best child. It was of no import that the greatest chess player of all time, Magnus Carlsen, was also about our age and a grandmaster by the time he was 13. These were our Super Bowls.
Like many others during the beginning of the pandemic I found myself with tons of time and my old habit returned stronger than ever. I began devouring books and watching any lecture I could find. I learned new openings and theories and retaught myself the language of chess. I'm firmly better now than I ever was and I would still lose 99/100 games against any good player. Probably all 100. The highest rated player on lichess I've ever beaten was rated 2335 and I beat him in a 1-minute bullet game. He's in the top 97% of all players on the site. He has no title and is no master. He's a nobody. Like me.
After each player moves 3 times there are 119,060,324 possible positions that could exist on the board. In most games players move over 40 times. Computers do not know how many different chess games are possible. And again I will never be good at this game. So why devote so much time to it?
I'm a really bad gift giver. I usually just give cash but there are occasions where that doesn't do and I usually let myself (and others, I'm assuming) down. Thankfully the people around me are gracious and don't yell at me for giving them a bad gift and for that I am grateful. I know what I did(n't do). There's that old saying, often attributed to Hemingway, "Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name." I doubt Hemingway ever said this, and whether or not he did doesn't matter, but I think it is devastatingly wrong. Sure, the idea behind it is sweet. Leave the people who remember you with a good taste in their mouths. The hobo ideology if you will. Leave it better than you found it. But it's important to take one more step. It isn't you. It's the idea you left behind in someone else that then carried over to another, and another, and another.
Chess is really hard. I'd be worse at it if someone in the 1700's didn't have a great strategic idea that was passed on to someone even smarter who had an even better one that passed etc etc etc ad infinitum. I've lately been helping teach some of the people close to me what I know about chess and I love it. I don't have a ton of great advice but I can help a little. And I like having to think really hard about what I'm going to say. Describing a chess concept, like any concept, is inherently poetic. You have to try. Best words, best order. If you play the exact same moves in the opening but in the wrong order you'll lose. I can't tell you what having a seizure is like without explaining what's happening around me when it happens and what it feels like beforehand and how my head feels after and the crushing realization that my memory isn't what it used to be and that it's okay because I'm still young and can get it back. And no, not everyone has that experience because all brains are different. None of it exists in a vacuum.
The way you tell the story is what will last long after anyone remembers you. This is what's at stake when it's all over. You will spend your life learning and teaching and playing and learning and teaching and playing. And you will lose. You'll have to set up the pieces and play again. Over time you'll be able to tell someone how you lost. And then they'll lose. Differently.
And then something else happens.
-Michael Campana