Checkmate

I can't play chess. I'm not bad at the game. I'm appalling. People who are bad at the game have their men taken systematically off the board and their King surrounded by five of the opposing pieces for a checkmate. I, on the other hand, seldom lose pieces. I face a checkmate in the first two moves with all my men still in play and not one of them of any use.

Chess seems to require faculties which I simply do not have. I get along all right when it comes to things like addition sums and learning nursery rhymes, and even an occasional game of checkers, but chess has always been to me one of those deep and incomprehensible works of art that you admire deeply, but whose meaning you know will always elude you.

For one thing, chess requires that you think about several things at once. I have never succeeded at that for more than five seconds. Usually, I concentrate on not losing my King, sacrificing Rook after Pawn after Bishop until the inevitable happens. Sometimes I decide to vary my strategy. Then I launch a full-fledged attack with both Knights and the Queen, completely oblivious to the advances the opposing Bishops are making on my King.

On a few happy occasions I have managed to think about both attack and defence for fully three moves. Then I manage to get in a check, but in the euphoria following that I lose all sense of proportion and send my men on reckless sorties that lead to a rapid change in my fortunes.

In the end, though, it all boils down to one thing: the moment when the other person says, "Check," and I, searching for a means of escape and finding none, think that it is simply impossible that I should lose more spectacularly than this - only to be proven wrong with the very next game I play.