Ah, chess. The nerd's best friend and the mathematician's ultimate dream. With more possible games than there are atoms in the universe, chess is a game of endless possibilities. With an estimated 700 million players worldwide, it might be one of the most popular games of all time. But are we truly as normal as the rest of the populace? Probably not. The special oddballs who have the fortune to call themselves chess players boast quite a few quirks. Here are 15 ways you know you are a chess player!
1. You get a good position, just to screw it up in time for trouble.
We spend hours upon hours building up our positional advantage, and for what? So we can mess up, of course! We take control of the files. We centralize our knights. Get a solid pawn structure, jump into holes, put an opponent into zugzwang. Then, one careless move later, Poof! All is lost. Hope you enjoyed your 99 percent perfect play. That 1 percent just determined the game!
2. You do a post-mortem with your opponent.
Our ideas are always the best, right? Wrong. No matter the strength of our opponent, we chess players always listen to what they have to say. Doesn’t matter if they fall short tactically or completely lack positional understanding. Just looking at our own wacky ideas over the board after the game has some charm.
3. You get incredibly aggravated at people calling a chess piece a “horse.”
It’s a knight. Not a pony, not a horsey, not a horse. A knight. It’s kind of endearing when a little kid does it. Not you. It’s a knight.
4. You feel the intensity of a money round.
This is it. We either win and go home with a decent chunk of change, or we lose and play the game over in our heads a million times. We’ve done well in the tournament thus far, but we need to bring home the bacon. Checkmate will be our victory song.
5. You buy a lot of books and then end up forgetting about them.
Aagard’s ‘Positional Play’? Nimzowitsch’s ‘My System’? Can’t be bothered. Better to spend hours playing bullet chess online, watching John Bartholomew, or watching our Chess Lord Magnus Carlsen. We are not worthy!
6. You partake in trash-talking during blitz games.
“You think you’ve got that? You’ve got nothing!” Ah, trash-talking. We do this whether we are mating or getting mated. It doesn’t matter what the board looks like! If we can get the last word in, we’ve won that little battle in our hearts. Yeah, a Grandmaster might blow the peons off the board, but we can talk up a storm better than he ever could!
7. You wander around the boards in the middle of your own games.
Let’s face it. Our own games are boring. Sitting still for hours and just looking at your own pieces is boring. But looking at other games? It gives us a certain sense of satisfaction. Whether it’s “Ha! I know how to win THAT position!” or “Phew, I’m lucky I’m not this guy!” the other boards give us some comfort.
8. You travel cheap.
When I went to the Kansas Open, I slept on an old air mattress in a house that was practically falling apart. But hey, a friend of a friend offered to let us stay for free, so stay we did! No IHOP for breakfast. That’s for the rich chess players. Instead, we scrounge for cheap coffee around the playing site and hit the vending machine to get a six-hour sugar rush. It’s going to be a long tournament...
9. You understand our gibberish of a chess language: notation!
1. e4 c5 may be the best opening for black, but there will always be detractors. If we see a scoresheet, we’re going to try to play that game in our heads. If we can get all the way to the end, a smug face will arise. Normal people may roll their eyes, but we chess players know the truth: we know at least one more language than they do!
10. You dream of making Grandmaster one day.
For the vast majority of us, it is but a pipe dream. But we can always crack a smile at imagining the initials “GM” in front of our name on a pairing sheet!
11. You have a favorite game.
Short-Timman, Tillburg, 1991. Nigel Short marches up his king to h6 just to win in style. Our dreams are not filled with unicorns, but of playing our own magnum opus. We might never make GM, but we can still play some good games.
12. ChessBase is your new best friend.
Openings might not be the most important thing in a chess game, but having millions of games in a database doesn’t hurt! Plus, with kibitzers and tons of handy tricks, this nifty little program makes us better, one game at a time.
13. Your friends are an eclectic bunch.
I know surgeons and skaters, poets and philosophers, prodigies and veterans. No chess player has a friend group that is a monolithic bunch. We live, we love, and we fight for the game that we all share.
14. You study endgames like crazy.
Yeah, they’re not as flashy as tactics or queen sacrifices, but the Philidor, Lucena and Vancura positions are still really important. Even the kids who prefer Greek Gift Sacrifices are going to learn how to win pawn-up endgames. It doesn’t have the appeal of smashing through with a blistering attack, but a win is a win!
15. You are never going to give this game up.
Once you’re in, that’s it. We couldn’t give up this game if we tried. Addictions might kill, but this maddening game is a better addiction than most. Whether we’re 18 or 80, these tactics and strategies are in our blood. We couldn’t give them up if we wanted to. And we never want to.
