My road to chess glory Part 6: Overcoming Hurdles.

The summer of 2013 would prove to be a time of emotional uncertainty as I really didn't now what to do with my life without the game of chess. In the end, I decided to go on a ten week adult education course learning i byntermediate French which I received a certificate for at the beginning of 2014.


Although I at the time announced that I would no longer be a member of South Norwood Chess Club, I realised that the was one big problem with that decision; the fact that I would not be able to get my hands on the Ellary Williams Memorial and Stoneleigh trophies. Therefore, in order for me to receive the two trophies that worked so hard to earn in the first place, I would have to reverse my decision and return to the club. I eventually received the Stoneleigh trophy on Wednesday 30th October 2013 before the start of an away match at Wallington and the Ellary Williams Memorial trophy the following day on Thursday 31st October 2013 at South Norwood Chess Club. 

I started 2014 with one of the biggest scalps of my career, beating Koby Kalavannan in a major scalp in the first knockout phase of the CCF World Cup. At the time, his ECF grade was 159 while mine was only 121. At the time of writing, (February 2021) his grade has now increased to 226. I started with a very quiet opening in order for me to recover from the heavy rain that I had to travel in that night. He responded dynamically but left some holes in his defence and made a bad exchange that really allowed my position to gain power towards his own king. In the end, he simply suffered due to the growing positional pressure of my well placed pieces. Although the game lasted long into the night, I was confident after a while that I was going to win this as my positional pressure started to materialize. I can't even put it into words how joyful I was when the game finally ended. It really showed me the value of learning positional understanding in chess and how it can beat even significantly stronger opponent.

 During that summer, I would participate in the Felce Cup for  the first time since my disastrous debut campaign in 2010. I would have to travel to the Trinity Road Club in Wimbledon as there were not enough participants from south Norwood Club to form a South Norwood Section. I was always fond of the venue as it was an elegant little room that was upstairs from a pub that had a pool table, a dartboard and a TV screen.  My campaign got off to a slow start with 2 draws with black but with my first game with white became the moment that I had waited 4 years for. My first ever win in the Felce Cup after I had out-played my opponent in a rook and bishop endgame. I was soo happy and releived to finally end the curse of never winning a Felce cup game before. It meant that I was able to simply enjoy the rest of the tournament. However, this was as good as my tournament got as I could only mange one draw with my last 3 games, losing the last game tragically haven't earned a winning position. This ment that I had finished the tournament with an equal record of 1 win, 1 loss and 4 draws. Still, I was nice to end the wait for a Felce Cup which also meant that I can go into the new season in good spirits.

My review of 2020

My review of 2020

Before COVID

For the first 2 months of this year, I was traveling around London to help the Brazilian community of London with their English as well as working vigorously on my Portuguese. At that time, I was still playing out my final season Over-the-Board tournament chess and even leading my 2 usual rapid-play teams. However, in March, we all of this suddenly had to stop because there was a little something out there called... the pandemic. Yes this was the time the initial Coronavirus outbreak was affecting lives in the UK and therefore when almost everything we were doing had to stop. Phrases like "Stay at home" "Wash your hands" and "Wear a mask" was repeated continuously across the country as well as most of the world in what was a very uncertain time for humanity. Thankfully, for someone like me, the concept of staying at home was not a major problem for me as I am normally content with my own company. I had to finish the rest of my individual league standard-play games online via lichess.org.

My Birthday

This meant that on my 34th birthday on 12 April I had to do things for myself for my own birthday celebration. I decided to order a pizza with garlic bread, cookies and a tub of Ben & Jerry's birthday cake flavoured ice cream. When I ordered the food online, I was amazed that they can be such a thing as birthday cake ice cream but I really enjoyed it as well as all the other food that I bought.

Finding a teacher

During the year, I was looking for someone to be my professional Brazilian Portuguese teacher. During the month of May, I found an advertisement in the Anglo-Brazilian magazine 'Leros' of somebody offering lessons. After a small exchange of emails, we finally agreed to have a two hour class on Friday 5th June 2020.... or so I thought. However, after waiting for over an hour for a call to start on my Skype account, I decided to phone her to see if she remembered the agreed appointment time. I told her (in Portugese!) that I was waiting for her for over an hour. The response that I received was quite unexpected to say the least. She told me that I was meant to confirm the time of the class with her by email. She said that she had a screenshot of the email in which she asked for a confirmation. I never saw such an email and in fact, the last email that I received from her said "Yes, I confirm that I have your Skype contact details, no worries. No need to reply this email, I hope our next contact will be to confirm the payment and lesson time, ok." I thought that this meant that the lesson had already been arranged. I guess I was wrong. The phone call ended with he saying something like: "OK Richard. There has obviously been some misunderstanding so obviously I am not the right teacher for you so if you like Richard you can try someone or something else. You have many options. You have your blog, you have a lot going for you Richard so I'm sure that with the right teacher, you'll will you far. I love my language. Portuguese is a beautiful language and I wish you good luck. OK? Thank you. Goodbye.".

I was left completely dumbfounded by the whole experience. I couldn't believe that she would just give up on me after our first attempt to arrange a class. I would have thought that she would at least arrange it for the same time the following week. I would have thought that would have been the most sensible thing to do in such a situation. So I continue with my Memrise app and the tense book with exercises for me to do and just move on in the hope that one day I would have an official Portuguese teacher to work with me.(1) What a shame.

Final Season Finale

As a substitute for what would have been the remainder of my final chess season, Coulsdon Chess Fellowship decided to start a series of online speed chess tournaments on lichess.org. It took me a while to win one of these tournaments but I eventually did on the evening of the 2nd of July 2020. At the time of writing, I have now won 5 of those tournaments.

On the 5th of August 2020, I would officially announce my retirement from over-the-board tournament chess after 15 years. This was so that I can focus more on my new career as an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher as well as other personal and professional pursuits. 

Online work and loneliness.

I spent most of he rest of the year studying Portuguese, playing chess and giving English and language exchange sessions to my clients online. However, towards the end of the year, I was seriously doubting my chances of ever having an intimate relationship. It was thought by many people that learning Brazilian-Portuguese will eventually see me with a Brazilian girlfriend. However, because of the ongoing pandemic, I was not able to see any of my clients physically. Perhaps inevitably, this lead to a small period of loneliness as it made me feel as if I was going to spend the rest of my life alone without ever having an intimate partner. This provoked me into making a post on Facebook on the 9th of December about the reasons why I believed that I would never find a girlfriend. This post said:

I have now come to the conclusion that the real reason why I don't (and maybe never) have a girlfriend are for the following reasons.

1). I am not simply not a normal human being (2).

2). I'm a deep thinking intellect which put most women off.

3). I hate loud places.

4). I never really know what to say to anyone.

5). I can find working with other people emotionally draining.

 When my mother learnt about this post, for some strange reason, my mother got really upset by this and even told me to take the post down, however, I am still struggling to understand how this would upset her, especially as I would have thought that she would know all of this from my childhood. All of this lead to a rather unfortunate row via voice and text messages. In the end I had to block her. 

It's pretty sad that my mother wants to censor my genuine thoughts and opinions about life in order to protect her own pride. I didn't say anything about her and all I ever did in the post was be honest about why I felt that I couldn't find love. On a positive note however, I did get some sympathy from some of my Facebook friends. 

Goals for 2021

Finally I do have some big resolutions for 2021.

1). To become and official online English teacher.

2). Learn Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Japanese as well as continue to study Portuguese.

3). To become an accountant.

4). Return to a meditation routine.

5). Learn to love my autism and not feel bad about it.

Let's hope it's a better year for all of us.

The End

Completed on Tuesday 9th February 2021

(1).Some good news: At the time of writing, I have now had 3 lessons via Skype with a wonderful teacher whose details I found on a digital copy of the January 2021 edition of 'Leros'.

(2) Of course I am aware that 'normal' is pretty subjective but I know for a fact that I have never fitted the concept of 'normal' in the perspective of society. to learn more about how I feel about loneliness, check out my blog series 'The myth of normal'.