Somewhere in hell, there is a cavernous hall filled with row upon row of people playing online speed chess. Their games bear not a trace of exuberance or wit. Instead, these wretched souls are confronted with utterly sterile positions, perhaps a lone king and rook on each side, but their flinty, remote adversaries will not agree to a draw. Instead, they shuffle the pieces back and forth – a pointless rook check here, a king sally there, and before long our infernal victims have run out of time, and lost. They curse at the injustice, and yet the next game is groundhog day.
If you play enough games online, you too will run into one of these unscrupulous opponents, who stop at nothing in pursuit of the full point. In those miserable final seconds, I find myself overcome by a mix of panic, boredom and misanthropy. By contrast, I harbour no ill-feeling for an opponent who plays for time in a hopeless position. When I’m trying to win, that is fair game. When I’m determined to make peace, that’s just not cricket.
I must admit that my instincts are somewhat old-fashioned, rooted in a time when chess was played with analogue clocks. With both flags ticking higher, nobody really knew how many seconds were left, so running down the opponent’s clock could easily backfire. With digital clocks, there is a cold certainty over who holds the edge, and who wouldn’t want to exploit that?
Unforgiving as it is, at least that modern ethos still leads to a clean sort of fight when the game is played on a digital board. In the desperate final seconds of play on a physical board, matters can degenerate rather quickly. Rooks move to ‘f7½’, or are sent clattering across the board.
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