Chess: Son-in-law and Me.

by Angela K. Durden
Citizen Journalist. Business writer, novelist, songwriter, and Technology inventor protecting creator's copyrights. 

This is an actual screenshot of me winning at an online game of chess.
I am white. The win came as a happy surprise to me.

I don't have many chess stories, but the one's I do have are doozies. You can read about one of those stories in the December 26, 2017, column on this site entitled "Chess: Perpetual Student, Old Boy, and Me."

This one today involves my now-ex Son-in-Law (SIL) when he wasn't ex. I wanted to learn and play chess. He did, too. They lived down the block. So, I bought a chess set. Many happy evenings transpired in which our spouses, that is to say my husband and daughter, watched TV in the living room as we sat at the kitchen table learning the game.

Oh, it was fun. I recalled the conversation I'd had with Perpetual Student and all that he'd taught me and all that he wished Old Boy would never learn, namely: Chess is a mind f*ck.

And since Son-in-Law's mind was so easy to screw with, of course the game was much more fun for me than for him.

You see, he was serious about it. He would be better than Mother-in-Law (MIL). He. Would. Beat. HER!

Frankly, and truth be told, neither of us are very good at it. We're equally matched in chess skills. He won 49.5 percent of the games and I won the rest. For the most part, 98.25 of those games were not too-too exciting.

But the other 1.75 percent is where the mind games blossomed. In those is where I really got to mess with his mind. For instance, here's one story:

So, there was SIL, chasing MIL around the board and somehow or another, MIL managed to continue to avoid SIL even though SIL massively outgunned MIL. Technically you could have called the game a draw, but SIL would not let that happen. He. Would. Beat. MIL!

"MIL! Give up. You know you've lost."

"Clearly, SIL, you can see I have not lost, but it is you who have no more options. You're out of opportunity to..."

"I am not. You are, MIL."
"Nope, SIL."
"Yes! Give up, MIL."
"Never! Not me, SIL."

And so on for at least ten minutes during which time — I am confident memory serves me accurately — I laughed cruelly at SIL and continued to taunt him on the board and with verbal thrusts aimed at his manhood until he stood up, laid down his piece on the board, threw his hands up in the air, and cried out, "You win. I can't take it anymore."

I said, "Are you conceding I've won?"

"Yes! Yes! Damn you! I'm never playing with you again. Aaargh!"

And we never played again. Mostly because of the divorces that followed, but I didn't miss the game because truthfully I don't like it. It's boring because it is so rule bound and relies on its own mystique to keep people coming back for more.

The mystique is that it is war. And that, if you are good at strategy on the chess board, then somehow you are good at strategy on the battlefield.

Well chess isn't war and the board isn't the battlefield.
Ideology and practicality are two different things.

Then again, if you can convince the enemy they've lost, then you will win. So maybe chess is war after all.