I did play for my county. It was on-line. As anticipated I was very tired and played poorly. I started with some verve but finally lost on time around 3am, by which time being two pawns down the position was close to lost, if not already lost with correct technique.
There is such a marked difference between playing on-line and playing over the board. Irrespective of whether you are playing for a team in a match or not, play on-line is the play of a lone-gun. It is not the play of a team member. You don’t feel the pecking order in play, the hierarchical nature of conversation, and neither team order nor importance of match result. It’s just you alone in your room and the screen you stare at. I couldn’t really differentiate between a casual game on-line and a formal county match because they are both depersonalized experiences which involve no human interaction.
The human element of chess is missing with play on-line and although it felt like an honour to represent my county once more, that per se was a pyrrhic victory of sorts, my pride somehow unquantifiable.
If on-line chess is a drug, I admit I’m an addict for it never is ‘just one fix’, as that ministerial number goes. But as another, perhaps more pertinent, goes ‘the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse but I know I’ll see your face again’, and so I expect yet more poor on-line adventures or should I say more on-line misadventures from a woeful McCready… .
Olcmarcus
McCreadyandChess 
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