Return of the Rookie

You may recall that in 2016 I published a book called The Rookie: An Odyssey Through Chess (and Life). It represented my attempt to be a better chess player and, perhaps more important, a better person. Strong, resourceful, determined – a winner, but one who knew how to win with grace. And someone who, after a lifetime of dilettantism, had finally mastered a discipline, a whole world, the world of chess, in all its depth and complexity. If you read the book you will know what happened: I felt I did improve as a player (emphatically not as a person), but the gains were marginal. Mastery remained elusive.

After the paperback of the book was published in 2017, things got even worse. I carried on playing, but less often than in the years I spent working on the book and with much less motivation. And as you will no doubt have discovered, if you’ve got no motivation you are nothing. In a game between two opponents with similar skill levels, the will to win is everything. You really do have to want it and be willing to push yourself. The comfort zone is for losers.

I could happily have retired from chess after the book was published. I was not one of those obsessives who had to play. I could exist without – and beyond – the board. My ECF grade had dipped to 144 after peaking at 152, and following a wretched, dispiriting, motivation-less autumn 2019 (eight draws against largely low-ranked opponents, four losses to decent players graded between 157 and 176, and a solitary win against a weak player), I really did feel like packing it in. There was, though, was thing stopping me – Kingston chess club.

Kingston had been a good choice of club while I was writing the book: small, quirky, full of idiosyncratic characters, and based first at a freezing hall owned by the Quakers and then at a 24-hour Asda hypermarket on the A3. It was good for copy – much more rewarding than the far bigger and slicker Surbiton club, where I also had a foothold, further down the road. But once the book was done, there was a problem: I felt a certain obligation to struggling Kingston (which has fewer than 20 active players and an average age close to 60). If I quit, even with my modest talents, it would leave a hole. So I decided to carry on, but more as organiser than player. The more I organised, the worse I played – the two are rarely compatible.

But it was worth it. Kingston were transformed after the pandemic, attracting members new to chess and some very strong players, notably the young Mexican David Maycock Bates and the ferociously competitive Peter Lalić, two 2200-plus players whose talent and tenacity galvanised the first team. Suddenly Kingston were contenders: we won five trophies in 2021-22, including the Alexander Cup – Surrey’s premier knockout tournament – for the first time since 1975/76.

The pandemic had changed the balance of chess power in south-west London chess: Kingston and Richmond, happily ensconsced at the Adelaide pub in Teddington, were on the up; Surbiton, after a series of misfortunes involving loss of both venue and a batch of key players, and Wimbledon were on the way down. Slightly further afield in our patch, the giants of Guildford, Hammersmith and Battersea remained the clubs to match – large, well, run, ambitious.

Part of me thought that one with more push, Kingston could make a further leap, but I also knew I was exhausted after helping to push the club forward dramatically in 2021/22 and then by organising the Kingston Invitational in July 2022. I was becoming tetchy, obsessive, wanting control of every minute aspect of club life and of the Kingston website, into which we had put a huge effort in the post-pandemic period as a means of publicising the club and demonstrating its new-found ambition after decades in the doldrums. I was burned out as a club organiser – though I still hope to run a second Kingston Invitational next summer – and was becoming a hindrance rather than a help to my fellow club officers, so I gave up my official positions and reduced myself to the ranks, intending to play for Kingston and Surbiton in the local leagues, CSC in the 4NCL, and to play a few weekenders again. For better or worse, the Rookie was reborn; 1700-strength players across the land were quaking.

Chess aficionados can read more about the ups and downs of Kingston chess club, much of it written by me, on the club’s enterprising website: kingstonchess.com

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