Last February 10, I wrote about my past preoccupation with chess, and the reasons why I shied away from it (not totally but in terms of volume that an active chess player should play to be competitive in tournament plays).
Actually, that week, there was a tournament held in our locale. And it reminded of my past love affair with the game. A sort of reminiscing the past, I mingled around the tournament tables. On the second day of the tournament, I was talking to fellow spectator. He is a teacher, and he seem to be very enthusiastic with his comments , and a realization cannot be denied that I can no longer follow the flow of the game. The fellow turned out to be somebody whom I played chess with 20 years ago. My chess playing was still a bit stronger then, but was already in decline because I can no longer remember the exact opening repertoire, or the variation of the moves.
After the tournament, he and a friend who participated in the tournament, visited me for a game of chess. We played a several games and the results were awful. I made mistakes that were very elementary. There were instances where I would lose my queen due to a fork or a pin, a discovered check, and all those elementary novelties. I was laughing at how I missed those seemingly simple variations. But I enjoyed our encounters though, one because they allowed me to win some games.
They visited me several times, and slowly I would try to focus and concentrate more, but the result would still be thesame disaster. Every game became a proff of the LAW of USE AND DISUSE. Atrophy has set in clearly, the line that was once very obvious where no longer there, the patterns is nowhere to be found. Perhaps, the neurons connectors in my brains have been cut off , or my short term memory can no longer access the data deposited in my long term memory.
Now I am playing chess again, with a lame excuse of fighting old age diseases. It is believe that chess helps combat alzeimers, so I would like to play chess again before alzeimers sets in. But the main reason is that my warrior self could not accept the fact that my opponents would only accomodate a win for me. My proud self well not allow such pity. I will recover my old self, I will rediscover my old touch, became my new mantra.
Well, after about two months, the line are slowly appearing, and I am winning once again, although not in a fashion of long ago, but at least not an accomodation win.
