Not sure why

After two years and three weeks, I've decided to get back to blogging.

If I start with football, I lose half my audience. But it's been a bad football few days and getting it off my chest will hopefully improve my gloomy mood. Maybe later.

I recently stopped playing computer games. My much-loved Civilization VI game was superceded, obviously by Civilization VII, and I was excited in anticipation of the February launch. Until it turned out it wouldn't run on either my laptop (expected) or my desktop (unexpected). So a choice of spending substantial money on a new PC or an upgrade or examining whether I wanted/needed to play turn-based strategy games any more. I chose - for the moment - to live without computer gaming.

This decision was in part influenced by my new obsession - chess.

I've played on and off for much of my life - off more than on - at the level of knowing how the pieces move. There was an English chess player named Nigel who became a Grandmaster at the age of 19, eventually ranked number 3 in the world and played a world championship match in 1993 against the legendary Garry Kasparov. That however wasn't me (there are plenty of other well-known Nigels but I'm not going there at the moment) - it was Nigel Short. Of course as a young man I followed the famous Bobby Fisher vs Boris Spassky cold war match, in the same way I followed Ali v Liston in boxing and other iconic sporting battles. Later I followed Kasparov vs Anatoly Karpov in 1985 - I was a sporting nerd. Actually a sporting spectator nerd.

One of the things Fischer was famous for was his queen's gambit opening leading to a stunning world championship victory and this inspired the 2020 Netflix series of the same name - also referencing the cold war - based on a novel by Walter Tevis. This caught my attention and that of millions of others, particularly as the world was in Covid lockdown at the time. Enter (historically) Deep Blue.

Deep Blue was a computer program developed by IBM, which defeated world champion Kasparov in a game in 1997, thus signalling the end of the world. Gradually chess 'engines' improved to today's level where the top Grandmasters simply cannot beat them.

In 2007 the chess.com website was launched and became the 'go to' online platform for ordinary humans to play each other over the internet. So when the dreaded lockdown occurred in 2020, and The Queen's Gambit screened, the stars aligned to create a major "chess boom". I, of course, ignored it as I was starting blogging.

In late 2023, at the Sea Farmers Dive Taproom in Whitstable, a seminal chess match was played. A 13 year old young man, distantly related to me, asked if I played chess. I obviously mentioned I hadn't played for years but knew how the pieces moved. I don't exactly remember why there was a chess board there but anyway we played. I'm going to spare the young man's blushes and not mention the result but the main outcome was that my son (who had been watching) and I decided to join chess.com and we have played each other (and occasionally others) online ever since. Here's the state of our current game:

That's me at the bottom (playing as black) in my Ipswich Town celebratory gear (if it's possible to celebrate relegation). It's my son's move. No helpful suggestions in the comments please - that is officially cheating!

The question remains whether I have the patience to continue blogging regularly. I hope so but comments are very welcome and I'm hoping family members in particular can spread the word. Bye for now.