I am not a good chess player but, like most of my generation, I started playing at an early age and “have always known” the basics. I find now though that I am playing more than perhaps ever before, and (finally?) making some progress towards a deeper understanding of how to get “better”.

As with any game of skill, practice helps; and the lockdown has provided an unexpectedly fertile context for enabling this. Not just in terms of my own time and the availability of a “good enough” technical platform, but also in the increased probability of finding counterparties with both time on their hands, and a similar mindset.

Also helpful is an opponent with a sufficiently-similar level of skill such that no-one gets bored: it’s just as dispiriting to “always win” as it is to consistently lose. I have one University friend who is much better than me and thus I always lose – so we play only very occasionally as a sort-of-benchmark as to whether I’m making progress – and I regard it as a courtesy from him to me. I probably could learn a lot from him but this would require taking it to a more formal teacher/pupil level and that’s not really what this is about. I’d rather get closer to his level through my own efforts and then re-enter the fray on a more even footing, if that is indeed possible. Chess fortunately also lends itself to fairly broad differences in capability – unlike squash, for example. With squash I learnt a long time ago that, because of the scoring system (you first have to win the serve back, and only then can you try and score a point) even small skill differences can rapidly lead to walkover-level scores as the better player rarely loses two interchanges in a row. Chess is much more forgiving than that.

Both of my schools took chess relatively seriously and I even recall playing for my year against a girls’ school when I was about 6, as part of a four-boy team. I probably wasn’t any good and my main memory of the day was that me and my first-game opponent decided to ignore the expectations that we would rotate to play all the other members, and instead played all four games against each other! Many years of playing at lunchtimes and in school clubs followed but, apart from buying the classic Harry Golombek book The Game of Chess, I don’t really recall any serious progress or study (or, indeed, teaching) and, in the 6th form, for me Bridge took over really (more on that another day).

My father and I had played fairly often until I was a teenager but once I got better than him that stopped, so my game had no real social dimension or impetus from there on. Chess is also not very televisual and doesn’t feature much in fiction either. Apart from a brief flurry of renewed interest after reading Walter Tevis’ The Queen’s Gambit, I don’t recall being inspired by any media coverage (even the Kasparov/Deep Blue matches) until the great 2016 film Queen of Katwe.

However, one thing that had made an impression on me was the occasional plot device of correspondence chess. Historically, each party would have a chessboard set out with the current state of the game, and each in turn would write (or telegram) to the other with a move. Games could thus take a very long time, or be quite active, depending on the thinking time needed, the relative busyness of the people, and the speed of communication (remembering that some UK postal districts used to have 7 deliveries per day…).

All the above thus coalesced into a conviction that there must be an internet-enabled App that would duplicate the asynchronous model of correspondence chess and be perfect for reconnecting with an old school friend/chess-foe. Quickly finding “Chess by Post” this happily proved to be true. Not only that, the App came with the usual internet features of being cloud-based and multi-platform – and also the powerful facility to plan moves before committing. This feature was new to me in practical terms – although of course the traditional simplistic measure of mastery is counted in “how many moves ahead can you see?” and we all strive to look “further”.

The combination of a well-matched partner, an App that allows us to maintain both an effectively-permanent series of games and to develop real skill through practice and scenario planning has provided a real breakthrough, I think. Re-reading Golombek yet again, I see further depth in the strategic options and approaches, and more is “sticking”. While the portfolio of standard openings is still a bit daunting, and I’m miles off learning some of the “classic games” of Fischer et al, there is a joy in identifying and executing certain plays, of which my current favourites are the pin and the fork. (Along with keeping my opponent in serial check – which is always fun and often very powerful strategically.)

Simplistically, the pin prevents an opponent’s move by implicitly threatening the piece that it behind the apparent target. Most aggressively, the King is the implicit target and thus the “pinned” piece cannot be moved at all – perhaps becoming an accidental sacrifice or a party to a suboptimal exchange such as Rook-for-Bishop. Looking for pin opportunities is a major feature of my current approach, second only to fork-seeking. The fork exploits a major differentiator of the Knight threat, in that it cannot be blocked, and threatens two pieces at once. Again, the most aggressive variant combines a check on the opponent’s King, with a threat to another piece – ideally the Queen. The fork is almost always very bad news for the victim. Furthermore, without very careful and diligent defence, this play can be very tricky to spot in advance, and is thus my favourite “surprise move” at the moment. Of course I must have read about these moves in Golombek before, but combined with continuous practice there is something deeper developing, which is very pleasing.

There is a long-standing allocation of points values to the various pieces (1 for a Pawn up to 9 for a Queen, etc.) which allocates 3 to both the Bishop and the Knight. Perhaps there are “hot debates” in the chess community about these and whether they are still appropriate for the modern game, but I haven’t yet been inspired to look. I have heard that Bishops are seen as more valuable early in the game, and Knights later on. However, given the above, I would definitely come down on the side of Knights, and will always sacrifice a Bishop for an opponent’s Knight, given the chance. Perhaps my next move should be another deeper reading of Golombek, looking for sophisticated Bishop plays, which might affect this view…? We’ll see.

Overall, I doubt this would work anywhere near as well with someone not previously known “in real life”, but I have found this near-perfect as a way of simultaneously developing a dormant skill and deepening a relationship with an old friend. (Who is hopefully enjoying this as much as me… there is also a chat function in the app which adds to the social dimension in a very elegant way – so I think so…)

So – if you’re currently thinking that you perhaps ought to “phone a friend”, or a relative, but aren’t sure what to say – this might be worth a try? It could change the world in a very small but positive way…