• she/her, they/them, sie/sie/ir, ask

dyke, poetess, games writer, &cet.

wow! this lesbian can pierce space and time!


if you can see this,
you have permission to message me on discord

so the local chess club today hosted a simul. our "grandmaster" wasn't actually a titled player, but he was very good (I might be remembering a different guy, but he's walloped me 1v1 before). furthermore, halfway through the tournament another Very Strong Player Who Genuinely Knows His Shit And Also Plays Like Instantly* arrived and took over half the games for reasons of time-- including my half. gulp

*I don't know which player was stronger. However I was more scared of the second player because I've played him more recently, and he plays quickly and effortlessly. I'm 1-1 against him but the game I won he opened 1. d4 d5 2. e4??

But I won!!! I think I was the only player to beat the masters in the simul-- although, to be fair, I'm a very slow-thinking and positional player, so I benefit disproportionately from the inherent time odds of the format. Also, the psychological advantage the masters had over me was dulled significantly: My opponent for the first half of the game played the London, which I know like a corgi queuing for the subway, and by the time the second guy took the wheel I had a huge initiative. The poor dude played for 40 minutes and made maybe two meaningful decisions other than "White to not lose".

Anyway simuls are really cool because they drag you deep into the inherent liminality of some chess moves. A queen trade would take at most ten seconds in most games-- but when the master takes my queen, I have to wait for him to make moves at the other thirteen games in the tournament before I can take it back. The guy who took over my half of the room was laughing at how it took maybe half an hour to make a series of five or six forced/ing moves. I got the opportunity to think so, so deeply about positions where I would have snapped off a tactic. Truly the simul is the game that celebrates nosediving into the limen.


You must log in to comment.