The 2084 Precept Read Online Free PDF Page B

grandmasters, you wouldn't find them in a place like
this. They scrape their living playing for teams in the major
European leagues and on the international tournament circuit. So
the guys that are here are here to earn additional cash, tax-free
like the rest of their income. They never play among themselves,
except for a bit of Blitz when bored. They are after the punters,
very often businessmen who think they can play good chess but
can't, weak club-level players at best who dream of one day beating
an experienced opponent or two. Which they never do and never will.
But they keep coming back, each time they put it down to bad luck
or to an obviously weak move made at some point in their game, and
it usually takes them a long time, years, before they eventually
wake up to the fact that they are never going to make it.
    I am also a punter, but one who earns some
petty cash here from time to time. I turn up occasionally when
finding myself at a loose end in London. I am not a master but I am
a strong club player and I have an international Elo ranking of
2265.
    Chess is the only game I know of where no
luck is involved. It starts off exactly the same every time. There
are 72,000 possible positions after two moves, 9 million possible
positions after three moves, and 300 billion after four
moves—I use the Short Scale version of the term billion, it`s a
word the Americans have raped but it is indeed easier than saying
one thousand million—and the number of possible positions in an
average-length game of 40 moves is more than all of the quarks in
the universe. Yes, quarks, those things which neutrons and protons
are made up of and which, in turn, are the components of atoms,
except hydrogen atoms of course which have no neutrons, and so we
are talking a big number here. And if you find it difficult to
believe any of these chess statistics, you can probably check them
out nowadays on the Internet.
    When I saw that the only person not playing
was Ivanovic, I was not disheartened. On the contrary, you only
really enjoy chess when playing an opponent as strong as, or
stronger than, yourself. Ivanovic was a master. Not quite as good
as he used to be, certainly, but you never lose your master title.
Ivanovic had definitely come down heavily in life and he looked it.
He was a miserable kind of guy, one of those who hate other people,
who hate the world and, in many cases, also hate themselves. He
virtually lived in the En Passant, and he had the pasty white skin
to show for it, and he did nothing else, absolutely nothing, except
play chess. For money.
    "Hi," I said, "wanting a game?"
    "Only playing full games today," he mumbled
back in thick-accented English, "two hours on the clock, £100."
    For my café chess I prefer Blitz, five
minutes per game for £5 a game, but full-length makes for better
chess and would probably give me at least a reasonable chance
against him. Mind you, £100 was a bit steep, but who cares? "O.K.,"
I said, "I've got the time. Start right away?"
    He didn't say anything, merely nodded in a
disinterested and bored manner, sat down, set both clocks, and
tossed a coin. I lost and so I had the black pieces. A disadvantage
but not a fatal one of course; however, as Black, you do have an
initial task, which is to strive to achieve equality as soon as
possible. Ivanovic started with e4 and I chose the Sicilian
Defence. It suits my character, it's adventurous, it provokes the
production of adrenalin. In many variations of this opening, Black
can be subjected to persistent kingside pressures—which can reach
hurricane proportions if not defended with great care—while at the
same time obtaining plenty of tactical opportunities of his own for
counterattacking on the queenside.
    To cut a long story short, the game followed
one of the various lines of the Scheveningen System, a common
Sicilian variation, and on the nineteenth turn I made a somewhat
weak knight move, allowing White to gain some positional advantage.
And