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nastiness and chess

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gaereagdag

OK. Let me start with a story.

A long time ago in the late 1980's I was 13. I found a chess club and there was this old guy called "Mr Brown". I beat him a few times and he got sick of it. He said "I'm tired of losing to a 13 year old".He couldn't beat me.

So the next week he turned up and said to me "I'm going to beat you tonight". He smashed the chessboard onto the table and waved his hands and said "move".

I beat him one game after another. He tried at chess but he was clueless. In one game I played the exchange French and 3. c4 and he gave the centre away with 3... d5xc4.

We got to the last game. He left his queen en prise and saw it before I could take it. He waved his hands in despair, turned his king over, shook his head, and walked out with a despondant air. It was the sort of "giving up chess altogther" response. As he walked past I grinned. I couldn't help it!!

But I still feel so bad. He was a nice enough guy. He carried around this book of the chess rules. Sometimes he talked about opening traps that he was trying. In one of the above games he opened with 1.Nc3 and after about five moves he said "I had an opening trap from move 1 and you avoided it all".

Should I have said something to concole him before he walked out? I think that he kept on playing chess; I didn't stay at this cub for much longer. But I heard from other players that he walked out of the club a lot complaining that "he was always paired against strong players in club events so he'd never come back".

OK. Go for your life with responses. Some of you will find this funny. Some of you will say "old codger, no mercy" Smile

Some of you will say that I was a torturer of old people!!

Walter0508

some will say thats life, he should have tried to be open minded and learnt from a better player. thier are always new things to learn dont you think and new ways to learn those things just be open minded.

bronsteinitz

Linux, I started playing when 12 and played club for a couple of years until I found it was consuming to much time and I stopped. I beat up quite a number of elderly and most of them took it as good sports.. There is no reason to not play your best against anybody, because that would be really bad mannered :-) Your opponents need to see you perform as good as you can. If the guy did not come back, it was certainly not because of you. I can however imagine that somebody can get disappointed when not winning. This is why in every club some attention needs to be giving to supporting the weakest players.