Chess Prodigy

I remember the first time I played chess, it was against my father who would always win when I was 10 years old back then. As always, whenever a kid plays chess, he likes to use its Queen all the time. The Queen piece though being a woman, is blessed with many quality moves and every kid loves a Queen raid into his opponents territory. I bought my first chess set at the age of 11 and started playing with my brother and kept winning until my brother decided to make mirror moves (making a move same as me) that took away many wins from me. I started getting red with anger though swallowed it at first thinking to myself "one more win and I am going to rip him off!". As usual happened, he would copy my moves and defeat me. By then, my blood has already gushed to my head, I started yelling at him which led into a fearful fight. My mom who had been tolerating us playing chess for few hours wasitng our time on it, she decided to put an end to our fight permanenetly. While we were fighting, she sneaked into our fight, silently took our chess board, ripped it into two halves and throw it on the trash bin. That was quite a perfect throw, I must say. By the time we had realized that our chess has been torn apart, I broke into tears and continued fighting, only this time shouting "YOUR FAULT! YOUR FAULT!" That was the end of chess and that was the last time I played it.

In many counntires, chess game is considered a game for older people who are about to pass away any second. If any young child is spotted playing game, he would be scolded and make chess look like a boring game. All my life, I thought chess as the most boring sport, not because I didn't like its concept but merely because it takes alot of time to make a move and whole of your day is spent before the game is finished. That's the sole reason why chess is not played vastly around the world specially in Asian countries. When I graduated my 12th class, I had to go to Malaysia for further studies. All my life I had been living in KSA, and its really dry for extra-curricular activities. Hardly there are any tournaments for any kind of sports. I found Malaysia a land of many opportunites, when I joined degree course in my university, I got attracted to my University's Chess Club. They would organize weekly activities for us students to practice chess. Before I realized it, my urge to play chess suddenly aroused in me which led me to buy a chess set (once again) and I started playing with my friends. Me and my friends would practice chess twice or thrice a week in our favorite restaurant after university hours. We would gain quite a public attention. Chess being a famous sport and played by many people in Malaysia, people would come near us thinking we were some Grandmasters in chess but not for long till they realized that we were making amazingly childish and stupid moves in order to kill each other that resulted in terrible loss of attention, but we never cared now did we? I had defeated everybody limited to just my friends, my defeated friends encouraged me that I should go for the Championship and I must say I was encouraged. Its funny that my friends never encouraged me in studies, quite an irony. Anyways, I joined the Chess Club Committee in my University. First day of practice session, one of the players made an open challenge to everyone "who wants a challenge ". I accepted the challenge with much confidence or over-confidence I guess, it wasn't my fault, I was awesomely encouraged and motivated by my friends now right? Boy, that was some crushing defeat that welcomed me on the chess board. After losing, I had to go to the weaker players for the challenge, which I did and I lost badly with them as well. Was I ripped apart by every player in the room or what, well I did win one game but not the perfect day. Why look on the gloomy side because on the bright side, I got a good initiative; I had promised myself for a revenge. Now you see, this what chess is about. When you lose, you lose prestige, then you got to avenge yourself and for that, you must prepare well. Chess is all about patience, teaches you how to patiently kill your opponent with your mind. Guess, that's why its not tremendously played in certain Asian Countries, people would think their kinds are becoming silent terrorists. When I started playing chess as a hobby, I learnt that actually many people, mostly teenagers, hate chess. Now why is that? I found out, that not many teenagers can think tactically and strategically. They have no idea what chess brings to the table benefits vise. They lack the ability to think critically. No offense to my teenager friends, but its a good support and encouragement for many chess players out there. Anyways, back to my initiative that I was blessed with; revenge time! I started taking out time from my busy schedule and practiced chess everyday. I read books Winning Chess Series written by GM Yaser Seirawan , and learnt my favorite chess openings. I started analyzing legendary games that were played hundreds of years ago. Bobby Fischer and Capablanca are the two legends in chess who have made aspiring history for many young chess players to read. Their games are still analyzed at top level of chess. In this era, Garry Kasparov remains my true inspiration. His chess-games videos served as a constant source of entertainment for me. Whenever I had free time, in my weekends, my housemates would call me for their weekend activities, I would just turn them down and study chess. Not that I stopped studying for my mechanical major, everything was going simultaneously. After several days of preparation, I went back to my chess club, challenged everybody to a one-on-one battled on the board, and to my surprise, my chess actually has gotten a lot better than expected. I had taken away many wins from everyone of them, except three players. I joined a University Tournament, and came third. And yes, I was satisfied, but no I wasn't fully satisfied because there were more players remaining on the battle-board that I couldn't defeat.

At this level, craze for chess had died down a bit, but obsession still remained. During my leisure time in weekends, I would just play online in three websites: Chesscube, ChessCom and Freechess. By that time, my rating was 1100-1200. It was just an amateur rating. Yes, many chess concepts were clear in my head, but something about chess I always lacked. As a 1200 rated player, I started noticing that the opening I use in my chess games, I had learnt them from videos and books. The rest of the game starts after the opening is over and all the pieces on the board are developed. So, what I noticed is that I wold run out of move after the theory lines of openings.  I lacked the logical thinking behind what to do after the opening book lines are done, how would I proceed with my attack, how to successfully force your opponent into 'checkmate'. Many players use openings which they read off the book and follow book-lines variations for their particular openings and after that, they play their games depending on their position that they get after the opening.Its almost like you take the horse to the side of the river for him to drink, now its upto him how he drinks, which is pretty easy, just put his damn mouth into the water but chess is not that easy. You have to be really quick to think 5-6 moves ahead, you have to know by using which opening will give you a more comfortable position on the board, you have to make sure by every pawn move you make on the board, is it benefiting you or your opponent? Just one blunder and its lights out! Game over!

After realizing my problem is chess skills, I started surfing for more chess material on the web and was out of luck because most of the chess materials are not free, you have to pay to know the secret. Now here is the little rule about chess; if you know more, don't tell it for free and that's how most of the Grand-masters make their money. They publish their chess books and make good money. Fortunately, I landed on the two most famous Youtube channels of established personalities in chess world; Kingscrusher and ChessNetwork. They are players from UK and America, inspiring and encouraging younger chess players. Both of them are competitors of course, trying to get more followers and be better than each other. They live-stream their games and tournaments many times in a week and record them to put it on youtube. I would just sit and watch their games. Both of them, specially ChessNetwork, are really good in chess strategic and positional vice. Its because of their videos that my chess games took a major turn and changed the structure of my games. To my surprise, my rating increased from 1200 to 1500-1600.

The first opening I used as white is King's Indian Attack. I really loved that opening when I was 1200 rated player. But with stronger players, my King's Indian Attack didn't turn out to be quite a good idea because of too much pressurized position. Then I switched to Nimzo-larsen Attack which starts out with 1.b3 .... 2. Bb2. Now this opening has brought me lots of victories. Its really a flexible opening, you can transpose that opening to any position you want and many Sicilian players aren't able to generate any deadly counter-play. The best opening for black is French Defense - Advance variation. It works well with many stronger players, and this opening is still played at top level.

Now I am considerably good in chess, definitely not a weak player and most definitely not the strongest. One day, I plan to go for IM Title if I get a chance.