Fish Fryday!

The season is upon us! When all good Omahans—Catholic or not—participate in our Lenten ritual and eat fried fish and drink beer to excess in a church cafeteria on Fridays! Hallelujah and praise the Lord! 
Yet still this year I have had many moments to pause while chopping pollock to remember how much I resembled that little fish in the last tournament. If only I had had the good sense to sleep in a few Saturdays ago and then—well, it never pays to consider suicide after a bad tournament. You could just wind up like Luzhin—

             The window reflections gathered together and leveled themselves out, the whole chasm was seen to divide into dark and pale squares, and at the instant when Luzhin unclenched his hand, at the instant when icy air gushed into his mouth, he saw exactly what kind of eternity was obligingly and inexorably spread out before him.      
                             Vladimir Nabokov The Defense.

Nabokov helpfully named his hero Luzhin, a pun that in the Russian original must have been no where as painfully obvious as it is in translation. Why not just name the guy Loser? Or fish for crying out loud!

Chop chop chop—it is so much more fun to be the chopper than the choppee!

Still it could be worse! I could actually be named fish! Like that poor dude (no first name) Fish who took on the British master Gerald Abrahams (author of the Master’s mind, a book that I imagine with a huge grinning picture of Abrahams on it! Modesty, thy virtue visits few or no chess players!).
I mean old Fish didn’t even see it coming! Chopped, beer battered and deep fat fried, Fish may have abandoned chess for a finer pastime. After all, there is always parcheesi…

Can you chop up poor Fish?

For some reason I could not find this game in any data base (hmmmmm), so here is the game.