The Chess Game
“I guess you know what this means,” he said, as he captured my last pawn. He now had a pawn while I had nothing but my King. The winning plan is to escort the pawn to the eighth rank and there promote it to a piece, most likely a Queen. The game was in its eighth hour and I was tired. I’d been winning earlier in the game and then lost my advantage, and now it looked as if I would lose.
When you begin to lose your mind shuts down like a body when it dies. Thinking is difficult. You’d welcome an out-of-body experience. You’d like to be somewhere else, but you don’t really want to give up. You’re opposed to the idea. You have a responsibility to the game and to yourself to fight on.
You look at the board again with fresh eyes and you understand, it’s the opposition, that’s the key. You have the opposition in a King and pawn versus King ending. All you have to do is carefully maintain the opposition and the game will end in a draw. You look up, and there he is wearing a George Bush smirk, though at the time, some 30 year ago I didn’t know about the Bush smirk. My opponent still thinks he’s winning, he doesn’t know about Bush smirk either, but he’s wearing it.
You smile, he’s not sure if you’re about to resign or . . . You wait a moment and then say, “Yes, I know what it means. It means the game will end in a draw.” He looks back at the board and then at you. He sees what you see, but he plays on a few more moves. You demonstrate that you understand how to maintain the opposition. He says nothing, but circles a draw on the scoresheet and pushes it to you for your signature.