Chess, the game of life

How chess and sports have influenced my life.

I will start my first blog with probably the only activity that is part of my everyday life, probably since birth, which is chess. I don't remember when I started living with chess, my memory goes back to the age of three. I only remember that I was so small that I stood next to the table on which they were playing chess and it reached up to my nose.

My father was an officer in the Yugoslav People's Army and chess was a very popular activity in the army. It is probably because during the duty and night watches in the 1950s, when the situation on the border between Yugoslavia and Italy was quite dangerous, the soldiers and officers, apart from being constantly prepared for a possible military conflict between Yugoslavia and Italy and NATO, did not had much to do, except to keep watch, and to play chess when they rested.

Therefore, as far back as my early youth, I remember my father and his friends playing chess. My father usually won.

I sat for a long time at their games and watched them playing, especially if the weather outside was bad or it was already late at night. My father taught me the basic moves. But not much more. Everything else I learned by watching.

At the age of five probably I started to beat my father more and more often, more than he could sustain. He probably wondered how he could beat his colleagues so easily, but now he was losing to a child who didn't go to school yet. That's why he started cheating. For example, when he made a bad move, he took that move back, saying, no, that's a stupid move, that's not how it's played. Of course, I was not able to win a game this way anymore. Gradually I decided that I would not play this kind of chess anymore. I was probably no more than eight years old at the time. I never played chess with my father again. I noticed that my chess did not advance fast anymore and than I began to loose against my friends especially in my college years. Today, being a father myself, I reflect that this was not the most educational of a father. But, I guess that's how I learned that life is much more complicated and not too easy, it can also be unfair.

Chess as a school of life

I am sure that here are also the reasons for my belief that chess is the school of life. Patience, logic, calculation, losses and wins, anger and joy, who knows what else I could list when listing the feelings that chess evokes.

Later, in my teenage years, I did play in two or three tournaments, but without special preparation. I never really prepared for any tournament. There was very little literature at home, there was also no time, college was not easy. I wasn't that keen on chess anymore either. Even then, I was more interested in the universe and the stars, as well as girls. But I remember that I used to start tournaments with wins, and then it got worse and worse. I remember my last tournament where there were probably 12 to 15 rounds if not more. If I remember correctly, I got halfway through the tournament with only wins, I was probably in the top two or three in the rankings. Then, however, I lost all the games in a row. I didn't even come to play the last few games and I lost them automatically. That took a lot of willpower out of me.

My engagement with chess was similar throughout my life. It limited my chess to following the world championships. It wasn't until I was a little over thirty years old that computers and later Internet started appearing. It was easier to get games from tournaments and e-books, so I was able to devote some of my free time to chess. I must have climbed pretty high, as I scored close to 2200 points playing with a computer. At that time, this was a very high level for an amateur without systematic learning and without a teacher, as the best players in the world at that time, even Spassky, had little more than 2,600 points.

Chess and intuition

I remember the moment when I realized, with the help of chess books, that chess is actually something completely different from what I imagined as a child. I didn't really know combinations, tactics and openings. Just what I learned myself or from my opponents. But still, as a child and a youngster, I played surprisingly good chess. I remember I was maybe five or six years old, I played mainly on intuition.

I will give the example of a mate to a king with a bishop and a knight. I remember that my father showed me how to do it, and since then this mate has not caused me any problems at all. Today, after decades of playing chess and after thousands of games and reading dozens of chess books, I have to admit that I have to think a lot to succeed in checkmate with bishop and knight. At the age of five, I didn't think, everything happened with intuition.

At that time, chess seemed much more beautiful to me than it does today. In fact, today, especially with the help of computers, we have the secret of chess in the palm of our hands. That's why chess is no longer so much interesting to me to play it regularly, just like soccer is no longer very interesting to me.

The totalitarianism of sport and chess

In chess, the totalitarianism introduced by the computer bothers me. And in soccer as well. I am bothered by total tactics and dirty physical play. Even at the cost of a heavy foul and injury, which aims to make it impossible for the opponent to even get to the ball and play nice. As Brazilians and late Pele used to say, "Jogo bonito". To me, it has become somewhat similar to a neoliberal economy, where greedy capitalists fight with all means for profit, even at the expense of the health and lives of others.

Chess and soccer were an important part of my life, but I was also a very good soccer player. I even started two clubs in the settlement, one from my closest neighbors and the other from my neighbor's apartment blocks, so we played against each other. I made membership cards out of old notebooks and we behaved like a real soccer club.

Every day, the coach of the soccer club Kladivar passed by our field. He once stopped and said he needed sparring partners because his boys were preparing for a tournament. It was my first apperance on a real soccer field. We usually played on an asphalt basketball playground with small goals.

Some of my teammates got football boots, but I got to the locker room too late and did not got any. The game started and it was raining. Not only could I not control the ball barefoot, if I ran, I didn't stop before five meters behind the line. Of course, the coach then put another player instead of me, and I sat on the bench until the end, even though I was the best player in the whole team. And my teammates won the coach's club two to zero. The rain and lack of boots maybe influenced my future life. In a shiny day I could probably be able to show all my knowledge and I would probably be invited to play in the real soccer club.

I remember doing dribbles or scoring goals from almost 90 degrees from left to right, past the goalkeeper. Later, I watched world-famous players on television who scored such goals and received a standing ovation.

My playing soccer also ended when I went to college. Some neighbors moved away, and the only girl who was in our club fell in love very early and stopped playing soccer with us. Soon she got pregnant, as I still did not get a girlfriend yet. That's when my era of athletics began. I was invited to athletic club because on my college tournament I won with 39 seconds on 300 meter. When I finished my university studies, I transferred from Kladivar Celje to Red Star from Belgrade, and after finishing my athletic career, I ran almost every day for many years wherever I lived: in Serbia, Croatia, Argentina, Miami, Slovenia etc. Until the years caught up with me and with them the decline in physical capacity, back problems and medical errors that caused me to develop rheumatoid arthritis. Indeed, due to my doctor's mistake, the wrong treatment of an allergy (to from the USA imported ambrosia and other grass) with antibiotics (!), I will suffer from rheumatic diseases for the rest of my life. Here, my whole life of playing sports and living a healthy life is no longer helping me.

Therefore, my advice to young people is to play chess and do not neglect sports or physical recreation. Above all, while you are still healthy and young, try to educate yourself at least enough so that you do not become a victim of unnecessary diseases.

Even chess can be addictive

Chess can be addictive just like any other game, especially electronic games. So we have to be very careful. When mother asks to help her clean, cook, father to help him around the house, then do it without negotiation. Namely, in this way, we can learn know how to balance our lives.

When we are young, electronic devices should not be placed before socializing with friends. When we grow and already have our own money, it is good to remember our girlfriend or boyfriend, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather.

Idea? I can offer it: little gifts. Take a moment and jump to the following link: Gifts for family and friends. Then come back to this page because I have more to say.

Chess manual

I hope I will be able to prepare a manual that I made a couple of years ago and make it available for downloading for everyone who would like to make a step further. It's been many years in the making and I'm posting it here soon for the first time. I present it to all young chess enthusiasts and also to older people who would like to improve their chess knowledge, but do not have the time or will to do it systematically. The handbook began to be created back in the days when Russian and Yugoslav chess players, Spassky or Fischer ruled the world.

I learned chess mainly from the games of players like Svetozar Gligorić, Bora Ivkov (I was amazed with his positional play), Ljubomir Ljubojević, Boris Spassky and Robert Fischer (both on head image) and others. Those were completely different times and different chess than it is now. Back then, most were enthusiasts, today chess is a profession.

Ljubojević in New York

Finally, a nice anecdote. When I was wandering the streets of New York in the 1980s, I came to a park where several stone tables were placed under the trees. Old and young, white and black were playing chess. I walked from table to table and watched in amazement at the high level of chess they were playing. Most played punching the clock every few seconds (I never liked that), but some also played a slow, deliberate game. And when I stood at one of the games and stared in amazement at the high level of play, I noticed that all the best moves, which I myself predicted, were usually played by two players. I started mumbling in Slovenian and a guy standing next to me asked me something. He must have heard my incomprehensible speech. I answered him in English, but he didn't understand me at all. I myself had a very hard time understanding his dialect, probably from one of the New York suburbs. I tried to fit in, took care of my school English, but still we didn't get along very well. Then I took another tactic, pointing at me and saying "Yugoslavia", but he didn't understand. He probably didn't even know it was a country. At the end, I picked up the language that I thought he should understand. I said "Ljubojević". And the boy started shouting Ljubojević, Ljubojević and pointing at me. Dozens of people in the park began crowding around me. Some wanted me to play chess with them, others pushed them away and asked me all kinds of questions. I had no possibility to explain them that I am not Ljubojević, so I explained to them that I had to leave.

So, chess is a game that brings people together. Simple people in a small park in New York didn't even know about a country from Europe called Yugoslavia, but they knew who Ljubojević was.

Ljubojević and Trufunović also appear in my book Across the Sea to Oblivion, which is about Slovenian emigrants to Argentina. How and why, that's another topic and we'll leave it for another story.

To conclude: play chess, especially when you are young, because it will help you a lot in life. From all sides, both socially and from the point of view of intellectual development or the cultivation of life habits. Do not neglect your surroundings, try to manage your time properly.

But if you want to progress with my short chess guide, download it to your computer (soon I will add here a link) and all I ask is that if you find it helpful, please recommend it to other chess lovers.

Best wishes to all until next time.

And don't forget your loved ones, approach them from time to time with some gifts.