Returning to chess.

 

Returning to Chess

Hello everybody. 

On the 5th of August 2020, I officially announced my retirement from tournament chess. The reason was that I wanted to pursue a carrier as an  English as a second language (ESL) teacher. This thought was originally motivated by the fact that I had started to learn Brazilian Portuguese while I was working for a charity shop which at the time had 2 Brazilian managers. The head manager decided to make an advertisement in a magazine to encourage people to call me language exchange and English lessons. He believed that I would one day find love through this journey. As much as I looked forward to the challenge of helping people with their English (and practicing my Portuguese at the same time).  

However, this journey came with some major difficulties from the very beginning. Firstly, I had no prior experience in teaching anybody. Secondly, I had to travel to far-away places in London which would involve long and awkward train journeys which at one point saw me have to wake up a 5 o'clock in the morning for a 22 stop underground journey. I needed headphones and Spotify to on my android phone to help me cope with the crowds at the station and the rumbling noises of the underground train. Thirdly, I have had to do this virtually without anybody on my side to give me guidance or advice about how to do the job properly. Essentially this was a lone journey where I had to do everything by myself.

I went to different parts of London to see different members of London's Brazilian community and then... suddenly... the pandemic happened. Lockdown of the UK was announced in March 2020 as the world was gripped by the effects of the Coronavirus outbreak which meant that all but necessary travel was banned in order to keep the public safe. Therefore, virtual measures had to take place for me to take language exchange sessions and English classes. I downloaded Skype and Zoom on my laptop and had various sessions with different people. During the same period, I was looking for a personal Portuguese teacher. I saw an advertisement in the same magazine that my advertisement was in, saying 'Learn Brazilian Portuguese'. I emailed the teacher about my interest in working with her as a student of the language. We agreed to meet at a certain time of the week. 3 O'clock on Friday on Skype. So I arrived at my laptop at 3 O'clock of Friday as we agreed by email ... or so I thought. after many attempts to video call her by Skype, I decided to phone her. complaining in Portuguese about the one hour wait that I had. Then she angrily replied in English that I did not confirm the date and time of the class and even claimed to give me an email, asking for confirmation. (which I didn't see.) In the end, she said  that maybe she is not the right teacher for me and therefore, terminated or relationship. This would prove to be one of many fallouts that I would have throughout this journey.

I also seemed to have many miscommunications with other people who contacted my service. Some wanted English lessons, some wanted language exchange and I wasn't always sure what the person wanted. These moments really destroyed my confidence as I felt like I was desperately letting them down. There were many moments when I asked myself "What did I do wrong?". I got the awful feeling that luck was simply not on my side when it comes to working with other people. 

Then, come the start of 2021, my family got upset with me after I made a post , giving possible reasons why I have not been able to find a girlfriend on Facebook. I had demands from my family to delete the post, even though the post had absolutely nothing to do with them. To this day, I still scratch my head about what the fuss was about. I got into trouble with my family again in July 2021 when I wrote a blog about how my family can better support me. Once again, they were offended by the post and demanded for it to be deleted. It is obvious to me that my family does not want to know about my life desire, nor do they want to know about my ambitions.

One thing that I have known for a ling time is that people with Asperger Syndrome seem to have a much harder time making and maintaining relationships with other people. No doubt that I have experience this in so many ways in the last 2 years.

There has been a handful of moments in my life where I thought that I can get something out there that is somehow 'better' than chess. As you can see from the stories above, that has proven to be just a big illusion. No matter what happens to me in life, I will always love the game of chess and I will always have the game o chess in my life. It's simply what I do when the worst comes to the worst in life. Quite simply for me, Chess IS life. It's my past, my present and my future.

Hence, I will be making a return to over-the-board chess at some point. However, the return will not be an immediate one as I plan to start a ESL training and accounting courses before returning to the real life 64 square battlefield full-time.

Moral of the story is this. Never leave your biggest passion in life. You never know when you might need it.

Thank you for reading.

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'.

My retirement from Chess.

My retirement from Chess.

It is with deep regret that as of today, I officially announce my retirement form over-the-board Chess after 15 eventful years. I believe that Chess can empower people in so many ways. For me, it gave me the opportunity to prove to the world that I can achieve things independently. It has also given me the opportunity to make new friends and meet inspiring people. The game of Chess has really made me the person that I am today.

My achievements within the game includes winning the Wernick Cup, 2 Ellary Williams Memorial Trophies, The Stoneleigh Trophy, The CCF Division 1 title and a CCF Super league title.

I would like to thank everybody within the Surrey Chess fraternity who have contributed in some way to my journey in Chess. I especially want to thank everybody at South Norwood Chess Club for their immense support towards me and my chess goals , Coulsdon Chess Fellowship (CCF) for their great hospitality and organisation of tournaments and all the other venues with in the Surrey County Chess Association who have warmly welcomed me before team matches.

 

AS things stand, my goal in life is to one day become an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher as I am currently helping certain people with the English language while I am also learning foreign languages.

 

Despite this decision, my passion for chess will never completely die. I will continue to play online and continue to run my Facebook group.

 

Finally, I wish everybody the best of luck with your continuing journeys through the great game of Chess.

 

Miss you all.

 

Richard Davis.

My road to Chess Glory: Part 5: Hollow Victories

My road to Chess Glory: Part 5: Hollow Victories.

During the summer of 2012, I found myself playing in the Wernick cup again after just 1 campaign in the Felce cup 2 years before. (I was too unwell to play at all in the summer of 2011) I won my section comfortably, dropping just a half-point along the way with 3 wins and a draw which meant that I qualified for the 4-player, 3- game final of the tournament in the autumn. I had 2 wins and 1 loss in the final, losing only to the eventual champion. During that time, I also started playing as a member of Coulsdon Chess Fellowship. (CCF)

On the 13th of September 2012, South Norwood had their Annual General Meeting. (AGM) which I had to attend to as a captain of the Stoneleigh trophy. I was also technically a team captain of the Ellary Williams Memorial Trophy team at that point but the competition did not run in the previous season.

I actually went into the meeting with a report on a small piece of paper. After I mentioned the Stoneleigh Trophy team's record of 2 wins, 1 draw and 3 losses, I told the club at the AGM that I had felt a lot of scrutiny from the vice-president of the club who also happened to be the inter-club tournaments director. He responded to the summary of my report in a way that would have a strong emotional impact on me throughout the 2012/13 season. There was one quote he made that still remains in my memory to this day. He said "You don't pick your mates". I found this statement very upsetting because throughout my whole life, I have always struggled to make friends and have lived a predominantly lonely existence. He also said "As a captain I have won over 30 team titles. If it did it your way, I wouldn't even have 5". It was clear that he was not in favour of me being captain of the team. Another reason why I found those words so upsetting is that like in the previous season, I felt a lot of excruciating pressure to include the vice-captain in my team. A feeling that would lead to a small series of anxiety attacks. In fact, the humiliation of that night would continue as he also said things about me like "With all due respect, he hasn't set the world alight" and then another demoralising quote. "Take Richard's picture down (from the official club website) and replace it with a YouTube video of Yang-Fan Zhou. (A new member of the club at the time who was already a grand-master.)

I remember leaving that AGM feeling hurt and deflated my the vice-president's comments. I momentary thought about leaving the club at that point but I also thought that I am not going to give up on the chance of winning a team title as a captain, especially as I had a clear game plan to win the Stoneleigh Trophy so I decided to brave the season and hope that things would go my way. That said throughout the season, I felt obliged to have the vice-president in all of my matches.

Our first Stoneleigh match was away to Streatham. Around this time, I announced that I wanted to take a one-season break from playing for my county because of persistant illnesses. After mentioning the rules and dynamics of the competition, the vice-president decided to humiliate me again by saying that I wouldn't play in his county team but I still select him for my Stoneleigh team. He made me sound like I could not be bothered to play for his county team when in reality, I was struggling with allergic rhinitis and migraine headaches.

Before each Stoneleigh match, the two team captains try to work out the correct target scores for both teams. The target scores are based on the differences in combined grades between the two teams. In the end, Streatham needed 7 and a half game points just for a draw and all 8 to win the match while my South Norwood team only needed a half-point to draw the match and just 1 to win.

In the first half of the match, we all lost our games on all of the boards. I remember missing a tactic from my opponent in my first game with the white pieces. However, it was in the second half of the match (when we play with reversed colours) I won my game with Black. My opponent played a rather unorthodox opening, but I found a way to get into a good position and eventually out played him in the endgame. That was the full-point that won us the match.

Later that week, I would give an e-mail to various members of the club about how I felt about my treatment as a captain of the Ellary Williams Memorial Trophy team as well as the Stoneleigh team titled "Asking for Respect". In the e-mail, I mentioned that I had a series of illnesses and difficult events that I had in the 2 previous years as well as the fact that I had felt very humiliated as a captain.

A month later, we would have our second Stoneleigh match when our visiting opposition came with a team that had a combined grade that was over the 700 point limit. The match commenced as normal, however, the visitors were eventually penalised accordingly. Interestingly however, we would have won the match anyway as one of my teammates beat a player graded over 200 points in one of his two games while our top board also scored a victory. After that match, the vice-president complained about the content of the e-mail mentioned above saying that I insulted him. I replied almost tearfully by saying that he said things to me in the AGM that I would have never said to him. He eventually apologised.

After that, my season as a captain went smoothly. In fact, the season went perfectly as on Monday 21st January 2013, we won the Stoneleigh trophy after winning an away match at Guildford with a match to spare with a perfect record of 5 wins from 5 matches. My Stoneleigh formula was a flying success. I cannot even start to explain how proud I was for myself, the team and the entire club. It was quite frankly one of the most satisfying moments of my chess career. On Thursday 21st March 2013, My Ellary Williams Memorial Trophy team would also win their title with a perfect record of 5 out of 5 with a match to spare after a home win against the same club.

You would think that with all of that success, my chess life would be very enjoyable from here on. However, on the following Sunday evening, I would see an e-mail from somebody saying that a match which I was due to play in for someone else's team was postponed because there were certain people who would be playing in that match who wanted to watch a football match. It was the World Cup qualifier, England vs Macedonia. I was absolutely outraged by this decision. The idea of a chess team-match being postponed because other people wanted to go to Wembely Stadium or watch the game on T.V. was to me a total disgrace. I phoned the inter-club tournaments director who also happened to be our vice-president to question the decision. The reaction that I got from him was equally shocking. After mentioning that both captains agreed to the postponement of the match, he went on to say "it has nothing to do with you" "What do you mean it has nothing to do with me?" I angrily replied. After further angry exchanges, he hung up the phone on me. I was so appalled by both the postponement and the phone call that I decided to cancel the remaining matches of  both my teams' schedules out of protest against the postponement . I doubt that any football match is ever postponed for a chess event of any description so why should a chess event be postponed because of football ? I just don't think it is fair .

Although the final Ellary Williams match remained cancelled, the Final Stoneleigh match still happened with the inter-club tournaments director taking charge of the team. I twice attempted to reason with him but in the end, it was clear that he was just one of those people who seem to think that they are in the right all the time and was simply unreasonable. In the intervening time, I also suffered an asthma attack. No doubt that the stress and emotional pain would have played some part in my admission to hospital back then in what was an incredibly dramatic and  traumatic period for me as a tournament chess player.

My road to chess glory: Part 4: Scrutiny

My road to chess glory: Part 4 : Scrutiny

The 2011/12 proved to be a difficult season for me not just as a player but also as a team captain. At the time, I was the captain of the Stoneleigh trophy team and the competition recently had some major changes to the format. The Stoneleigh trophy was an inter-club,rapid-play team competition where there are 8 game between the two teams in each match. Each player score 1 game point for winning a game and half a game point for a draw. each match is essentially in 2 halves with 4 games played in the first half and the other 4 being played in the second half (usually, it's the same 4 players playing reversed colours; although they a team can choose to have 4 different players for the second half.) Whichever team scored the most game points for their team wins the match. However, before the start of the new season, I was told that there would be told that there would be a new handicap match format for the competition which meant both teams would have to reach a "target" score in order to draw a match and exceed it to win.

Before the season started, I had a game-plan about how to win the Stonleigh trophy. I wanted to be
one step ahead of my opposition. Basically, I wanted as bag a grade range as I can possibly get. As high-ranked a player as possible on board 1 and as low-ranked a player as I can get. on board 4 with average players on boards 2 and 3. New thinking for a new format. however , this philosophy cane under heave criticism from a member of the club who also happened to be the inter-club tournaments director of the Surrey board and vice-president of South Norwood chess club which I was a member of at the time. he simply wanted me to select the strongest players that I can get. Infect I almost had my captaincy for the Stoneleigh team stolen from me as he phoned the day after the 2011 A.G.M saying that he should take over the opposition because he thought I was "depressed" in the A.G.M. I had to tell him that I was not depressed but tired and I was still willing to run the team .

In the first match, we narrow lost by 1 point and the vice-president told me on my mobile phone on my way home after the match "you need to get someone who will get you a point". He simply didn't appreciate what I was trying to achieve with my player selections and first thought I chose a weak team. The results were not going our way and we only had one match win in our first four matches which meant we were unable to win the competition.  What made things worse for me was the fact that before our fifth match I had a serious stomach infection where I had to go to hospital one early Saturday morning which left me feeling weak for a few days. During  that time I had a very rude phone call from the vice-president accusing me of "falling asleep", clearly unaware of what happened to me during that week-end. The illness also meant that I had little time or energy to think of what kind on team I wanted to have for the match. I thought that I might as well experiment with one or two players who had not previously been in the team. However, the vice-president decided to take the law into his own hands and demanded that he should be in the team over another player. This lead to me having a strong panic attack as I felt as if he was denying me my rights as a captain to select the team that I wanted. Out of shear panic, I gave in and asked him what team he wanted me to have. He gave me the list of 4 players he wanted me to have for his team which inevitably included himself in replacement of another player. I felt like my power and rights as a team captain were instantly taken away from me. It was a moment where I felt named and shamed. We eventually won the fifth match our only victory that season. The final match ended in a draw.

I will never forget that phone call from the vice-president for as long as I live. The feeling of powerlessness I had during that moment haunted me for a couple of months and changed the way I viewed the vice-president. However the worst was yet to come. 

My road to Chess Glory: Part 3: The road to recovery.

Going into the 2011/12 season, I decided to make major changes to the way I played chess. Before the start of this particular season, I had a style that I eventually called "Tempo Hunting". This style of play was aggressive, but was also tactics dependent and required sharp calculation for it to be successful. I realised that my ailing body was not able to compete in the tactics department. Therefore, I adopted a more positional style. I changed my repertoire and relied more on judgement rather than calculation. After a while, I saw my results improving. However in the summer of 2012 when I was preparing to make my debut in the CCF Cup, I found myself suffering an asthma attack and had to go to hospital about a week before the start of the tournament which ment I was forced to take a bye in the opening round. This left me feeling fatigued for the rest of the summer as I could only manage an equal score of 3 wins and 3 losses. I did however did better in the Wernick Cup that year as I won my section and therefore qualified for the final on my first appearance in the competition since winning it in 2009. It was a 4-way final where I finished runner-up after 2 wins and 1 loss, losing only to the overall winner.