I woke up at 5am, went to the loo and checked my phone. My chess opponent had made a move. In the middle of the night? No, he's from Kazakhstan and it's 9am there. I go back to sleep and later - around 11am - make my move. I eventually checkmated him at 4pm Kazakh time.
I don't actually know whether he's from Kazakhstan, or even a 'he'. Here's his chess.com profile:
In common with many online games, you can select your own attributes to build your profile - choose your flag, upload a photo of your dog, whatever. For all I know I could have been playing a 10yo Swedish kid, although the time zone thing suggests his country may be correct.
Here's my profile:
Resplendent in my Ipswich Town gear, ready for the start of the new season on Friday. When I joined chess.com I didn't bother to set my profile so I had the default USA flag for a while. Didn't make me play any better,
I'm thinking of changing for a bit. This morning I watched the fantastic ending to the England v India cricket series. When I was younger I followed cricket avidly but there was a period when the England team were a pretty unpleasant bunch of spoiled brats and the Australians were the world's leading sledgers and so I stopped. This test match has lasted four and a bit days and I switched on by accident - searching for something else- and I was gripped by a thrilling finish, which India won. That, combined with the fantastic results being posted by India's men and women chess players, makes me feel I should identify (we can all do that now, right?) as Indian for a while. Although I wouldn't be getting up at 5am to make a chess move. Maybe it'll confuse my opponents and I'll gain an edge.
But I'm also thinking about Brazilian. There's been a recent upsurge in my blog views from around the world:
