Correspondence Chess – The Road of an Electronic Knight
By James H. Sawaski
(Part 1)
‘The Beginning’
I have always been a diehard chess player. I love chess! I study chess constantly – every single day – EVERY single day. Oh – I’m a human being! I work two jobs, I have a family and I get tired very easily. Some of the biggest things I love about over the board (OTB) chess are travel, the friendships and the atmosphere of competition. I have made some lifelong friendships going to chess tournaments and I have also made some life long memories as well. Not all the memories are pleasant – numerous second place finishes have plagued me. Last round upsets to players 800 rating points below or 20 year younger opponents thumping me can be a norm of frustration. However, hoisting three Upper Peninsula of Michigan Chess Championship trophies certainly took the sting out of many of the disappointments.
I used to have energy galore in my younger days! I even remember playing a 1900 until 3 A.M. back before the time controls were sudden death. As I progressed into my mid-30s (I know – still young to some people – ancient to others) – I started to have some health issues. Chronic fatigue just plagued my game. I also had horrible concentration problems. I could only seem to analyze a chess position in spurts. In 2006, after I won my third U.P. championship, I had to sit down and reflect. After that weekend Swiss – I was so worn out; I felt like I had battled a bad flu! My energy was dead and I was at a serious crossroads in my chess career.
I was studying chess again in no time, but one day when I booted up a chess program for a practice game I got sleepy. I kept saying, “What the heck is going on?” At that point, I started to think back about a different type of chess from my past. A former high school teammate Rob Skogman came to mind. Rob was Escanaba’s first board back in 1987 and one of a few teenage postal chess players I have ever met. He carried around this thick album with him all the time, called a Post-A-Log. Inside this album was a small three ringed binder that zipped open and closed and contained little laminated chess boards with sticky pieces on them.
Rob would pull out his Post-A-Log and start telling us how he had this 1700 beat, and that 2000 drawn. A 1300 would be trying a sneaky little plan. Oh – and he also mentioned that these games were rated! His 1800 postal rating towered over his 1500 OTB rating. There was a pile of post cards in the sleeve and he said that post cards were far cheaper to buy than stamps. I was intrigued right away! So much so, I joined a postal class tournament and in a couple months was on my way.
Unfortunately I couldn’t afford a Post-A-Log in those days. I remember keeping my games on paper and playing out the moves. Things went well for about 3-4 months and then mailing moves became work. For some reason the games lost their interest even though I was probably winning at least a couple of them. It didn’t take much longer and I forfeited out, thus resulting in an embarrassing 900 something rating because my OTB rating was over 1400 and in general everyone’s correspondence rating is generally higher than their OTB rating. My first chapter of correspondence chess ended in full disaster.
Several years went by – I lived through some heavy duty life changes; college, marriage, work and little children. I was in my junior year at Northern Michigan University when postal chess entered my life again. I’m really not sure what triggered it. I do know this time around I had a Post-A-Log, because it is the Post-A-Log I still use to this day. As a matter of fact, when I jumped into postal chess this time around, I really jumped into it! I didn’t have the money to travel to big chess tournaments. I lived in Marquette, Michigan which is by far not a chess town. Usually in Marquette, a couple times a year, there would be a one day chess tournament with about 8 players and then usually there was the U.P. Championship which pulled around 20 – 30 players once a year in August. Outside of that – it was chess club, which was competitive and a joy, but not nearly the means one needed in order to grow to their fullest chess potential. When I got into postal chess the second time, I really got into it! Eight games grew to 16, 16 grew to 32, 32 grew to 64. At one point, I believe the most games I had going at one time was around 90. I remember joining this postal chess club out of Texas, where in one tournament you played each player 6 different games at the same time! I was so addicted to postal chess that I not only had one Post-A-Log, but three of them! And all were packed full! When I went to my college classes, I would study my Post-A-Logs instead of listening to the professor. Thank goodness school came natural to me. I believe I had dragged that dismal 900 rating to a high 1700 rating. I was having a ball! This was going to be my life’s passion! Pure heaven! I had finally found what I was looking for in chess! And then one incident destroyed this singlehandedly. Yes – one incident – ruined everything. It was like a full running faucet had been shut off in one turn. The Internet was invented and I was introduced to chess servers!
As I went on to play about 30,000 blitz games, my Post-A-Logs became zipped up permanently. I remember giving up some good games. This ‘new’ online chess outweighed the slow traditional forms of postal chess by radical means. I was getting blitz games with players like GM Roman Dzindzichashvili and GM Peter Heine. I knew many IMs and future GMs on a first name basis, why would I want to mail moves by post card? I didn’t keep any of those game scores from this era of my correspondence chess. As I get older I really regret that – I had some good games I’d like to see again. One Black side of the ‘Dragon’ in particular was quite good against a guy from Italy, all gone now. Like anything, with time they were lost. When I quit the second time, my USCF correspondence rating sank to 1478. It looked grim for my poor Post-A-Logs, retirement loomed over them. Then the fatigue of 2006 set in and something changed. I couldn’t focus at the board any more. I’d start off focused and then my mind would start to drift. I’d think about work or other things during a rated game and that’s a no-no. Something was seriously wrong and although my game was still tough, my edge was gone. Quitting chess was never really an option I thought about, let alone considered. My friend Jim Walters says chess is in my blood – he’s right – it is – there is no such thing as a person like me quitting. But, what could I do to deal with the fatigue? That was the question. My OTB game was just wrecked. I was miserable. What could I do? Chess is everything to me! If I can’t play chess – then there is just no fun to life. After Christmas break, I saw an ad in ‘Chess Life’ for the Golden Knights and a newer tournament, the Electronic Knights played by email. No postage, but still rated. I thought to myself, these are pretty prestigious tournaments, U.S. Open-caliber tournaments. Surely I wouldn’t have a prayer of winning such a thing, but I could try this, if anything just for awhile. What could it hurt? It might actually be fun. It’s not OTB, but I could do this until I got my health back in order and got back on the right track for chess training. Correspondence would keep me sharp and I could compete at a rated level. Surely this had to be the first step in a solution to my fatigue problem!
Continued in (Part 2) The Return to Correspondence Chess here:
http://www.westmichiganchess.com/reports/Reports/RoadOfAnElectronicKnight2.aspx
Written by James H. Sawaski – author of “The Chess Team (A novel)”
http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Team-Novel-James-Sawaski/dp/0595346308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256154305&sr=8-1