McCreadyandChess

Okay hands up, I admit it.

I’ve only gone and allowed by life on-line to overtake my life off-line haven’t I? Of course it’s all your fault. Nothing to do with me, honest guv.

Not only was there an on-line tournament in my name, I’ve rejoined my old clubs and now look likely to join the county scene once more also. In addition, I am playing 10-20 games on-line a day and making light work of practically everyone, unless of course, I go and make some whopping blunder, which happens much more often than it should.

With white I play 1. f4

With black 1. … a6 if 1. e4 is played

and if 1. d4 then 1. ….b5

All rather obscure but then so am I. It therefore follows that facets of my game replicate the predilections of he who chose them. It’s not that I am unorthodox, if anything my style is quite classical. And although you may frown upon such opening moves, your own experience should tell you if you don’t quite know what to do in the opening, you shouldn’t expect to enter the middle game with a better position.

Moving swiftly on, I thought long and hard whether to publish my most recent writing project. I’ve had published authors confirm the quality is sufficient but I won’t be publishing it anytime soon, if ever. But this leads on to my next point, the next writing project. I have a synopsis of it already and even wrote the opening paragraph. It’s most likely to be between 40-60,000 words and will be published. I’ve hit upon the characterization, plot (pretty much), and content. I won’t start writing until I have everthing firmly in place. I have to factor in I have a style of writing which leans towards gothic, and the plot is complex in the way gothic novels often are/were. I shall provide plenty of updates as I go. All I can say at this moment is the main character is a chess addict but the depiction of the chess world and how chess is played will be far from complimentary if not downright disparaging.

On-line updates. I find the English Chess Forum to be rather predictable and always on the verge of an outbreak of squabbles, so when I post things its either to wind people up or cause members to think about things very differently. Some of my content has been removed, some find it too obscure to respond to, some find it hilarious. Admittedly I am a little too mischievous at times, and here’s two examples of my naughtiness. I usually write in the Chess History section because, at heart, I am an academic. There is a thread called Chess History Trivia, in which various questions about chess are asked. But I’ve turned the tables round and started asking questions about history which encompass chess. What are the chances of me getting an answer to either of the following two -absolutely zero I would say, nonetheless I find it amusing. You may care to try and answer if you so wish:

A playful if transgressional question here. Name a world champion who has had a book written about his past exploits BUT in that historical publication we saw no discourse whatsoever and there were no presuppositionless interpretations of the past – or if you like ‘axiomatic fictions’- as G.Steiner once put it- given that interpretations of the past are constructed in the present, this linked up to a lack of evidence in the writing that the author did not see ‘history’ and ‘the past’ as being categorically distinct, – a travesty of justice yes I know- and what’s worse he embodied the laziness that most titled players -especially GMs- enact effortlessly towards the rigours of research and academia, shying away because it’s too much like good hard slog, and instead confined himself to dogmatic statements which, at times, gave you the impression he was both a gobshite and a right little shithead, unable to grasp Croce’s dictum that ‘all history is contemporary history’, which of course, points towards the ontological paradox of the past tense. Care to answer or is the murky underworld of post-modernism rendering the question it itself rhetorical or too drab to ponder over?

Hint, try finding a world champion that only hardened postmodern historians have ever written about or alternatively just f***ing forget it.

The next as yet unanswered question,

Can you name any chess player who has been written about and bizarrely described by the author as a language animal in which word and world are somehow one and the same, meaning that the language he used not only referred to the world but constructed it also. No effort was made to explain the things he wanted and what needs he had, just the raw data of his results. What the player written about had in mind throughout his career was never touched upon once. The writing itself being a light-hearted romp which exuded incompetance and was not at all antithetical to Collingwood’s account of what history is but instead the typical drivel that very poorly educated titled chess players churn out, always writing away with a face you want to punch not greet, having been duped into the belief that his title actually has some worth outside of the chess world. Because they live with their mum still, whenever they are allowed out, to keep themselves just above the poverty line, they wander off into the countryside, find the nearest farm and shovel s**t all day long.

Hint: err, should be loads init.

As you may have noticed, I am rather proud of my working class background and fully aware that most reading are middle, upper-middle or upper-class. Whether they find me coarse or not is an irrelevancy. As Butler once said, ‘everything is what it is and isn’t anything else’. I am me and happy to explore, research and create whilst remaining myself at all times. As Aristotle once said ‘if you don’t like my style then fuck you’…oh wait a minute that was Ice-T wasn’t it…er, well it was one of the two anyway, hard to tell them apart… .

Lastly, I will begin adding some of my games that I’ve commentated on. I was rather tired in the first so there’s less commentary here than what is most likely to follow. From watching the elite on line so much, air have learnt that sacrificing the exchange is nothing too much to worry about, providing you have some compensation. That I did, and a few small errors aside which led to much deterioration, I checkmated my opponent in swift fashion after he completely cocked it up. In the second I am very much myself. Naturally I make a mess of things but manage to solve everything at the death.