Of chess and men

Hi guys!

Last saturday, I brought my daughter to her weekly art lessons in a small school in Bacoor Cavite where I used to teach. I was hoping I'll be able to catch on with "SIO", the school directress youngest brother who sells fruits and food for his family.

In 2003, before I got hooked with our game, I've heard a lot of stories about him. Sio, is a known figure in the place, called "master ng camella" by people who know him and who do not. Stories like, he quit schooling because of chess, he got hooked with chess and forgot all about his studies.

Fast forward, for the past three weeks of me being the driver for my potential art maestro daugther, has to suffer the long wait of 3 hours while waiting for the art session to finish.

Luckily that day, I got to his place in time and played 11 games against him. you see, this guy, on the outside, is pretty average vendor looking guy. No qualms, no pretensions.

But when we sat face to face against each other over the board, whaaaahhh! I'll tell you the score, I won 2 games, drew once and lost 8 games against him. The first game we had, I won and you know what he said? "Di pala pwedeng paganun ganun lang ang tira dito kay sir"

Came the next eight games. He won patiently, methodically against me. He was the kind of opponent who bores me, who veers away from out right-exchanges and establishes attack thru solid setting up of defensive lines. The funny thing was, each time he wins the game, he would offer a consolation to me by saying "tsamba lang ang panalo ko sa yo" To which I reply, "lupit mo Sio, tsamba, sunod sunod, taya ka sa Lotto kung tsamba lang panalo mo!" Hahahahaha!

Chess never ceased to amaze me. A lot of people say it's a genius game which I feel is an overrated statement. Inf act, Patrick Wolff, a former US Champion and a chess writer, has this to say

"...chess is some of the most fun there is! And get that idea out of your head that you have to be a genius to learn how to play chess! Could millions of people in US alone play, and enjoy chess if you had to be some kind of genius to learn it?"

I even came across this certain article, a research article on the connection of High IQ and playing chess competitively. It says there, the result of the study, that there is no connection with how high, or low your IQ is and your play of chess is affected.

We now arrive at this "People from all walks of life, rich, poor, highly learned, school drop-out and everything in between can play chess, enjoy chess and even excel in chess, without any necessicities except maybe... to fall in love with all it's beauty"

I believe the key here is creativity. You take Sio, a fruit vendor who threw away his grand, financially stable future, because he fell in love with chess and all it's beauty.

They say music is the food for the soul, then chess is the language of creative creations of the brain.


Your suffering from sleep disturbance, go get a board and play with someone. This won't cure your condition nor put you to sleep, but definitely, this will help you pass time better than counting sheeps, or in our case, counting lizards on our ceilings.

You want to have you child an improved focus and attention? Get him to play chess!

Go now, play chess, be creative and forget all that stuff with IQ equivalents. All you need is a chess set, an opponent and yourself. Let loose and an dbe lost in the complicated computations of your chess army.