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Diary of a chess tournament
"You can only spend your life trying to know it..."
Akram Herrak takes us through the highs and lows of competition.
It’s 8 AM, and in an hour, my first game this tournament is happening. Well, technically my second, but my opponent didn’t show up yesterday, a FIDE Master from Tunisia, and I avoided what could’ve been a troublesome game and got a free point instead. Now my luck is out, I have to play chess. I take a quick shower, grab a quick breakfast, and head to the playing hall on the back of my roommate’s motorcycle, speeding through the Casablanca morning to get to the other side of town and play like we’d never played before, throughout our countless afternoons hunched over our club’s dusty old chess sets. We’re both facing members of the Mauritania National Team, two players with significantly more experience than us. “Good luck.” “Good luck.” And we’re off to find our tables.
My opponent must be in his late 30’s, and barely smiles when I sit down, face all serious with the aggressiveness and determination that this game requires. I shake his hand and take my seat, fill out my score sheet, and then the arbitrator starts our clock. I have the white pieces so that gives me a little confidence: in a way, I control this game.
1- e4 e5
2- Nf3 Nc6
3- Nc3 Nf6
4- d4
The Four Knights Scotch. My signature opening, and my trusty companion for the last year or so. After these four moves, I’m confident I got at least a draw in my pocket, and against such a strong opponent, I wouldn’t mind the half-point at all. When he plays the next sequence of moves, my hopes of winning the game slightly diminish, he knows the theory and knows all the best responses, and the game continues as such:
4- … ex4
5- Nxd4 Bb4
6- Nxc6 bxc6
7- Bd3 0–0
This response practically denies White all his plans if the series of exchanges had continued and the white queen ended up on d4. Not the worst outcome for either side, but here the engine gives complete zeroes. The game continues in the spirit of the position. Very open play with bishops enjoying very nice diagonals and pins, and we end up trading queens which ruins his F pawns, and we go into an endgame that’s looking very drawish, with only White able to claim a little advantage due to Black’s split and doubled pawns, and the weakness on c6 that arises in the opening and the need to defend the D pawn. Play transfers to the queenside with Black putting pressure down the B file, and I see an idea to sacrifice my B pawn and win back the D pawn while managing to infiltrate and improve my position. My opponent is unimpressed and calmly snatches the pawn, letting me grab back my pawn but defending against the infiltration of my rooks. And then I spot a simple but hidden idea having to do with the A pawn, and my opponent doesn’t see it at all, he even came to me after the game and congratulated me on that idea, saying that he didn’t spot it until the end. Anyways, enough patting myself on the back, I play my idea and he doesn’t spot it, but I miss the last move in the sequence which could’ve won me the game, and the evaluation goes back to zeroes, rooks are exchanged and we enter an opposite-color bishop endgame with an equal number of pawns. I take a deep think, and figure out my endgame plan to draw the game, playing for a win here would only be a waste of time and effort, it just cannot be done, and the endgame plays out extremely smoothly from both of us, and we shake hands to a draw. My roommate ends up drawing his game as well, and we head back to the hotel to rest for our second game in the afternoon.
The tournament continues at an exhausting pace: three classical games a day, up to 11 or 12 hours of chess a day. It really fries your brain, and I don’t think I’d ever play a tournament with such a schedule ever again. During a game that I blundered away because of tiredness and lack of sleep, as I was watching my position get worse and worse after a poorly calculated sacrifice from my part, I started thinking about why I play this game in the first place, a typical thought one has when one is losing.
I remember being 11 years old, your regular class nerd, getting straight A’s and spending my free time reading anything I can get my hands on. A public library opens next to our house, so naturally I ask my dad to sign me up, and the first time I see its bookshelves, my eyes light up like a normal kid in a candy store. I spend a long time browsing then spot a book that teaches you the basics of chess, and having always been fascinated with the game, I browse no more and head to an empty spot and read the entire thing in one sitting. I get back home and start pestering my parents to get me a chess set, they do and I teach my younger brother and we start playing together. Being my only opponent, my chances to get to play chess depended on what my brother was in the mood to play, and chess was rarely at the top of his list. Throughout the years, I’d occasionally meet someone who played, and we’d have a couple games and that was it.
Then came the years when I had a severe online gaming addiction, spending up to 14 hours a day playing video games, and then came the day I decided to quit, and what better way to quit an addiction than to replace it with a stronger one? I got back into chess and wanted to get real good at it. I started studying and playing more, and of course, today when I look back at my games during that time, I was the equivalent of an average zoo monkey who had been taught how the pieces move, but that would change with time. I dove deep into the game of chess with a passion I’d never known before. I spent all day and all night studying openings and endgames, learning anything I could, and playing a lot in the local club in Casablanca.
Now, when I look back at it all, a million questions run through my head, but in the end I hear one clear voice: “It’s worth it.”
If I never had to work a day in my life, if my living was secured and I didn’t have to spend many hours a day writing, I’d do nothing but chess in my life. I believe it is the most beautiful thing humanity has ever created. It is a perfect game with immeasurable depth, such that no one can ever really say that they know chess. You can only spend your life trying to know it, and that’s the big pleasure of it. I’m well aware of the fact that a big portion of my life will still be spent on these pawns and pieces, and that fills me with a calming satisfaction: I’ll always have something I’m this crazy about, and consequently, I’ll always be really alive. My next tournament is in a couple of months, in another country this time, and I can’t wait for the day when I’ll get to walk into a playing hall, past dozens of crazy aficionados such as myself, trying to find my table and battle to death with a stranger. Stranger, beware, I’m on my way.