Since the death of my husband, almost two years ago, I have been downsizing and looking for a place to live that would bring me closer to family and friends. This spring I settled on Wilmington, Delaware, and I made the move a couple of months ago. I was very sorry to leave the women’s chess club that I had formed in Ann Arbor, and I’m not sure whether we will continue to meet online. But soon after moving here I learned that the University of Delaware’s education program for seniors includes a course called Chess Club. I spoke to one of the instructors on the phone before enrolling because I wanted to make sure that a lowly slow improver like myself would fit in, and I also wanted to know whether there were women in the group. The instructor reassured me on those points, and I have now been to the first class.
There was a snafu involving the printing of my badge, so I was late, and when I found the room it was packed. I immediately felt very happy to be in a large group of chess enthusiasts. The class was discussing a chess.com puzzle displayed on the large screen that culminated in an en passant, which led to a lot of discussion. I was fascinated by the next segment, in which each of the 20+ attendees gave a self-introduction. We were asked to talk about our chess background and give our rating (predictably, many demurred on this). Nearly every man in the group and one of the five women spoke about playing in childhood and on their high school chess teams. I don’t think there were any Queen’s Gambit–inspired players like myself. When I said that I had moved to town very recently, someone joked about the fact that chess club was the first place I had come looking for friends.
Next we played. The fact that I defeated the man sitting next to me with both the white and the black pieces certainly intensified my enjoyment of the experience. My rating has been on a plateau for quite some time, but I am hopeful that, without any more significant life changes on the horizon, I will finally make some progress. I smiled when I overheard someone in the class saying that they hoped this would be their breakout year. It is hard not to feel that the years of hard work won’t one day result in a significant increase in rating, however unrealistic that may be.
I recently thought of a new mantra that I think is helping my game. It is “Calculate concretely, calmly, and completely.” This means that, instead of being preoccupied by ghosts and fears to the extent that it hurts or even completely derails my thinking process, I do my best to calculate unemotionally and not stop the process prematurely. This applies equally when I have a winning position or a very promising tactic. I have frequently blundered when I see what I think is a very damaging pin but is really just a blundering of the piece that I was sure would do damage. I still battle self-defeating thoughts about my chess, but they don’t get the upper hand as often when I am able to shift my focus to calculation of the position at hand.