Why chess players don’t tan

Today is one of those days when you just don’t want to play chess.

Well, that’s not strictly true: you just don’t want to be cooped up in a chess hall for the daylight hours.  I’m writing this on my lunch break in between rounds at the Sydney International Open, and it’s a glorious day.  ‘The sun is shining, the weather is unlike Canberra’, to paraphrase Bob Marley.  The area around the Parramatta town hall is quite charming in a rustic, character-laden way (only enhanced by its rustic, character-laden bogans).  It is a great day to sit outside with a picnic, a guitar, an easy novel and a vague notion of a shoulder tan.  It is a great day for a picnic, for soccer, for feeding swans, and even for writing blog posts by the river. It is, in short, a great day to be outside.

Chess players do not usually play outside.

It’s these days that make it hard to enjoy the games.  Siberia was a different story; you could barely survive an hour out of doors, let alone enjoy it.  Heading to the match every day over there came automatically with a sense of relief and joy, if only because the chance of frostbite had decreased.  But here there is no such perk, and I’m finding it a real struggle to stay enthused at the board.  It’s probably not aided by the fact that the chess hall is dark, uninspiring, and appears to be shedding dust balls from its roof at an alarming rate.

I remember once playing a Queensland chess championship as a teenager on a beautiful Spring day in Brisbane.  The mood of the tournament was fairly relaxed, and once my friend Jacob Edwards and I discovered we’d been paired with each other, we asked the arbiter whether we could play our game in the park next to the venue.  He (Ian Murray) agreed, and we spent a pleasant few hours under the trees, casually compiling an appropriately relaxed position, broken up by the occasional conversation.  Every now and then, Ian would come out and chat to us (I’m sure his acquiescence was partly influence by his need to smoke), and the odd fellow competitor would also come out to have a gander at the game.  It was probably one of my most enjoyable matches, and predictably ended in an amicable, but well fought-out, draw.

When I lived in Holland, I had a different but vaguely corroboratory experience playing in the Dutch league.  There it is quite common, even in the highest grades, for players to not only drink beer during their games, but insist on buying one for their opponents as well (possibly to even the effects, but I choose to believe it’s more out of altruism).  The games would always be fought out to the bitter (ha!) end, but the beers kept flowing well into the analysis, and further still.

Sigh.

Back to preparation for the afternoon’s game.  Perhaps I’d better draw the blinds.  I don’t want a tan to spoil my tournament; my opponent might think I’ve actually been outside.