Shame.

"Win with grace, lose with dignity!"  -  Susan Polgar


Neither. As some of who you've had the displeasure of having to play me, you probably know just how appalling some of my post-game behaviour has been;especially when I lose. I tend to not want to do post-mortems or look you in the face, and quickly look for the nearest hole to curl up and die in. I'll come home and bitch about my loss to my non-chess playing friends and bemoan my fate. "Why must I lose to this idiot?" Screams Aron Nimzowitsch.


I think part of the reason why I take losing so badly is because I'm highly attached to results, an ego-maniac; a dangerous position as I'm sure you're all aware. For those of you that simply love the game and play it for it's own sake, some of what I'm about to talk about might seem alien. But first, a little story :)


Back at the 2009 Lethbridge Open, I was paired in the third round against a young guy named Tom Fox, a student at the U of L. Getting outplayed throughout the game against my lower rated opponent, I began to sink. "Jesus, why doesn't he just play the knockout now, IT'S RIGHT THERE SEE!?" He bails me out eventually and allows me to reach a winning rook and pawn ending. His 1 rook and A and B pawns vs. my 1 rook and A through D pawns. A sigh of relief blows through me. I get excited, "thank you Caissa, maybe you're not a bitch after all." Not 10 moves after this self-dialogue,  I pick up my king and move it to the only square that loses, allowing a skewer picking up my free rook. In complete amazement, emotions firing out of control, I gently raise my right hand and backhand with fury my king into the wall just to the right of us. I offer the offending hand over the board, not looking at him, which he shook--I darted out of the room as soon as I could. Afterwards, mulling the game over in my head over a delicious cigarette with nerves calmed, I realized just how surreal that moment must have been for him. I hoped with anxiety that I'd get the chance to apologize for my chemicals had gotten the best of me. Minutes later he walks into the parking lot with his friend Greg Holmes, and I walk over to try and excuse my poor manners, he accepts my apology. I'm whole again. 


I play to win, plain and simple. Winning is everything to me. If I don't win, I'm a loser, but If I win, my opponent must have been sick, off his game, didn't care etc. Unfortunately, very very few wins give me real satisfaction, the kind of endorphin rush that ought to make a person proud and show his game to friends. As I mentioned in a previous entry, winning games is nothing without the satisfaction of having dragged your opponent through the mud, to make him wish he had never sat down to play you the first place. I want my opponents to feel the same way about their chess as I do about my own little sad life. Winning isn't the icing on the cake of having played a decent game, no win, no cake, no icing, nothing. It's a very precarious situation playing chess only for the satisfaction of results, ego boosts and sadism, for of course you can never get it all the time, a fleeting sense of enjoyment, a drug. And like most drugs, the longer you use, the less pleasure you get from them, the scale starts to tip the other way and before you know it, you're sitting on the other side wondering what the hell you did to get there, you're lost at sea, no paddle, and just angry. "Don't do drugs kids" says the hypocrite, "drugs are the perfect solution to every problem you have right now, they're so good that they'll ruin your life"..and I can't stay away. 


The road to chess improvement is paved with bad materials. The car can't seem to go fast enough, the road signs are never where you want them, all the other drivers are either maniacs or idiots, the driving manuals are too complicated, text too small, brakes too touchy, and constant breakdowns. Did I check my oil before the left the house? 16 moves later, "cluck, cluck, cluck" goes the engine. "OnStar, roadside assistance, how can I help you?" "You can't" click.