Losing as Lodestar

If you don’t win, do you lose?  Not in chess, where a game can end in a draw.  In a recent game, which I was losing badly, I effected a stalemate.   Down to my king and a couple of pawns, I created a pawn skirmish diversion until my king was completely alone, not in check, and with no legal move available that would not result in check.  That’s a stalemate, the worst kind of draw when victory had been so close for my opponent. 

In the next game, after I took his Queen, we had to adjourn an exhausting game.  We snapped a picture of the board for overnight study.  I became certain that a rook sacrifice would guarantee a successful outcome.  The next morning I delivered the move and it proved insurmountable.  My chess buddy valiantly played out the sequence for a few more turns until he tipped his King on its side and resigned.  He was not a happy camper.  A few moments were allotted for me to bask in victory. 

                                          

        We racked and stacked ‘em and began a new game.  He came out with a vengeance.  I was reeling from the onslaught.  Then he delivered a move that I had never experienced: a triple fork with his knight that put my King in check and simultaneously attacked my queen and rook.  So I lost my Queen.  I should have resigned at that point.  But I found a new determination by remembering David Solway’s book of poems, Chess Pieces.  A leitmotif in it is that losing is a kind of lodestar that can energize more than enervate.  In “My Own Chess,” Solway notes “A poor start is a prerequisite”; and proceeds to sing the praises of “a bad beginning, / an early inextricable mess, / a quick disaster, seems to be the thing/ that promises promising chess.”  When he was writing this poem he must have been reading the score sheet of our game.

I decided there was no point wallowing in my woe, and so, with Macbeth-ean resolve, I screwed my courage to the sticking point and vowed to exploit the first mistake which my opponent was overdue to make.  And, as if on cue, he came through.  A bad mistake with his queen. I immediately captured her highness.  I was still far behind but now I gave myself a new goal.  I would cause protracted trouble, and make every minute of the rest of the game irksome and difficult.  I worked a plan to try to create a stalemate.  I didn’t maneuver skillfully enough to force the draw, but in fighting off checkmate as long as I could, I experienced something like the opposite of a Pyrrhic victory.  I “achieved” a laudable loss.  The oddly positive feeling was generated by the peace that comes when you open your spirit to the demesne of defeat.

                                                          I recognize the place, feel at home

                                               search for some resource, move king or pawn;

                                               a catatonic rook begins to roam

                                               about the board, or bishops dawn

                                               upon familiar darkness, accustomed strife

                                               my once-benighted game comes back to life.

  

When I was checkmated, as I knew I would be, I felt OK.  At least before that I had won the adjourned game. 

If I could have known what was in store the following week, I would not have believed it.  In a game in which I was being knocked pillar to post, behind in material strength, on the verge of resignation, I espied something I could hardly believe, a Q-B mate in two.  When I delivered my queen into his King’s face, he was shocked, looked at me and said, “No disrespect, my friend, but that was a stupid move.”  I smiled.  A florid grin.  And replied:  “That, my friend, is mate.”  Then he saw the bishop on the diagonal protecting the Queen’s fatal thrust.  He cursed me, pushed back his chair and slunk out of the room.  That was so satisfying my twisted evil brain thundered with the famous Apocalypse Now roar: