Chess is hard

I took a moment here on the beach to reflect on my life.

I thought about when I tried learning guitar. The strings hurt my fingers, and I just couldn’t live with it. I was, as some might say, “a little bitch.” I gave up before even learning one chord and did what any “little bitch” would do... I tried playing ukulele. Unsurprisingly, I quit the ukulele too because I sucked at that as well; I couldn’t play anything that sounded good. I kept playing the same three chords and singing about how small my penis was. To be fair, it really was small back then. Now, I’d say it’s a bit longer than the average American penis size, which is just okay in my opinion.

Sitting there on the beach, I also thought about when I tried stand-up comedy. I wrote a full set and performed in front of a crowd at a bar. Somehow, the set actually went great, but it wasn’t good enough for me. I recorded it and had some solid laughs about my penis again, but for some reason, I just decided to stop right there.

With my toes in the sand, I remembered playing RuneScape, this medieval online game. Back in the day, I was doing my thing and felt fine about it, but looking back, I was a complete dumbass. I spent so much time on that game just to end up a shitty player. I eventually gave my account to my neighbor, and he got it banned. That was the end of that.

I tried other video games, even ones meant for kids, but I always ended up being the old dumbass trying to figure out how to make a few bucks.

There I was, staring at the ocean, thinking about all these things. What if I can’t be good at anything? What if I was just destined to be a dumbass?

A little while ago, I tried playing chess.

The game seemed difficult, but I picked up a few moves and managed to win some games. I kept playing for months until I hit a wall: once again, I was a dumbass. I scrolled through Reddit, watched videos, read posts here, but I didn’t improve. First, the Reddit posts were always like, “I suck so much at chess, why can’t I go past 1500 Elo?”. The videos were always too advanced and the posts complicated. Meanwhile, I was stuck around 600, wondering why I couldn’t, just once, be good at something.

A few days ago, I thought about giving up. I kept making the same dumb mistakes, kept losing... but then something happened.

I smoked weed.

Somehow, my younger self appeared and told me not to give up, to keep learning. He reminded me that, yes, I’m a fucking dumbass, but you can be a general dumbass and still be decent at chess. He said I could probably beat my girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend (we had a draw, but he kept taking back his moves like a bozo). Little me saw greatness in me.

And here I am now. I bought the book How to Win at Chess, ready to fuck you all up. The reviews seem to convince me I'll still suck after reading it, but I'm sure I can come up with something.

To everyone reading this, TzatziKing’s back.