Sai and I would be playing our opponents at the same time, with Pep and her opponent being reduced to spectators. The four of us who were set to play had already taken our seats, and it was determined through rock-paper-scissors that I would have the white pieces on my board. As I had done time and time again, I began with my beloved Vienna opening.

To my delight, he responded with knight to f6, allowing me to gambit my pawn on f4 as I so loved to do, and to which he countered with his own pawn gambit on d5, a relatively common line for the Vienna that any well versed player is likely to already know. In fact, the entire opening was common and natural enough that, by the time I started trying to deviate from theory, my opponent and I actually had more time on our clocks than when we started.

We were at a point where both sides had castled (him kingside, me queenside) and most of the minor pieces had been developed from their starting squares. It was a very standard position for a Vienna game, which was exactly why it annoyed me so much. I wanted to play a dangerous sacrifice or any other interesting line, but I just couldn’t get a read on the guy. Was he taking his moves slowly because he was carefully thinking through the lines, or because he was unfamiliar with the position and losing confidence? Playing against him felt like a guessing game.

“A Vienna player. I’m surprised. Considering everything Kishi has told me about you, I had expected you to play something more aggressive,” my opponent said suddenly. I was under the assumption that we weren’t talking during games, but I didn’t dislike the fact that my opponent was speaking aloud. It could give me more opportunities to find holes and weaknesses I hadn’t seen before.

“Kishi is many things but a reliable narrator is not one of them. I would disregard everything he says as rubbish.”

“Heh, I suppose you do have a point,” he replied with a smile. “My name’s Raibaru, by the way. It’s good to meet you.”

“Kaburi. Likewise.”

As an expert in lonerdom I had come to dislike self-introductions. Well, I suppose it made more sense to say I had come to dislike meeting new people altogether. The gaggle of headaches that swarmed around me were the source of more than enough socialising for me, anyone else added on top wasn’t even worth the time. So the idea of getting all friendly with this guy that I was supposed to be beating didn’t particularly appeal to me.

Instead, I kept my full attention on the game. Despite having long since left theory, the moves we were both making were still so standard and dull that I felt myself becoming agitated. Not wanting to drag this out to the 60th turn, I played an aggressive move that planted my knight at an outpost square on d5 to threaten his backline, though at the cost of removing it from my own defence. A great player would almost certainly be able to exploit my new defensive weakness, but I had a feeling this guy was no higher rated than myself. Pretty much every move he had played since leaving theory was exactly what I would have done in the situation. As such, I guessed that he’d be no better at capitalising on things like that than I was. It seemed as if I was right, as the next few moves he made seemed to either be defensive or time-wasting in nature. Still, though I may have earned space in the centre and the opponents half, his defensive structure was far too strong for me to simply press the attack and slowly crush him. Looking at the board, between my strong but immobile knight and his complete defensiveness, I guessed that the position was damn near dead even.

“I can see why Kishi wanted to beat you so bad. He can’t deal with overly aggressive types, folds like a piece of paper. You must have wounded his pride back then,” Raibaru said in a friendly tone. His casual manner of speech pissed me off a bit.

“Something like that. Not that he really had much pride to wound.”

“Ouch, what a way to talk about an old friend. You’ve got a sharp tongue, Kaburi.”

“So I’ve been told.”

What did this guy think this was, a club social event? Acting so friendly with an opponent, what was he playing at? Whatever it was, it annoyed me.

The gridlock position was boring me more and more each turn. I moved my light square bishop to e4 to cover the knight at the d5 outpost, which would allow me to maintain a powerful position for a minor piece in the event of a forced trade. But after he forced a trade of dark square bishops and began manoeuvring his queen toward mine, I knew what he was going for. When he missed his opportunity to counter attack before, he must have decided to draw so he could replay as white. It was an incredibly annoying tactic that excelled at nothing but wasting time, but unfortunately it was also perfectly fair and legitimate. If I couldn’t find a way past his defence, the position was drawn, no matter who had the ‘stronger looking’ side.

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Pulling my queen back to f3, I started looking for ways to prevent such a boring and miserable end. He had earlier moved his rook from f8 to contest the e file, meaning the only piece protecting his f7 pawn was the king on g8. However, I knew if I loaded up a second piece to attack that pawn he would have enough time to defend it with any of his free pieces, putting us right back to square one.

“Looks like we’ve got a bit of a deadlock here, huh? Wanna just call it a draw already instead of wasting our time?” He asked, still smiling and speaking like he was just chatting with an old friend. I really wanted to kick his ass.

“...no.” As I spoke I played a move no good player would ever dream of. I sacrificed my bishop on h7 with check, taking a material disadvantage to remove the king from his cover. It was, objectively, a bad move. If black played correctly, the game was now tilted in his favour. But that was a gamble I was willing to take.

Bewildered, Raibaru took the bishop with his king, before watching my queen scoop up the f7 pawn as well. Two of the three pawns being used to protect the king had been stripped away, and my queen was a hair’s breadth away from it. The position was not in my favour, but momentum and pressure were. All it would take was a slip up or two and the king would be stuck in my mating net.

Raibaru moved his surviving bishop away from the back line to prevent my queen sniping it, to which I responded by advancing my outposted knight to e7. Black traded off his rook for my knight to prevent queen h5 checkmate, which swung the balance of material one point in my favour.

It was as I attempted to activate my h1 rook, however, that I realised I had made a fatal error. His bishop move earlier had not simply been to prevent a loss of material, but to also support an attack from his queen on my c3 pawn. His queen moved into position to attack, and I realised I had completely screwed myself.

My queen was rendered barely mobile due to being so far into his backline, and perpetual checks weren’t an option due to the surviving rook on the 8th rank. If I lofted my c pawn, he would either take the rook on d1 and continue with even material and the momentum advantage, or take his time setting up another attack, content that my queen had too few options to provide a legitimate threat.

I decided to instead protect the c2 pawn with my rook, which lost my advantage of connected rooks but prevented immediate material loss and checkmate. But as we continued to play out the line, it was clear that neither my queen nor my other rook had the mobility to protect against the relentless attack. By first setting up a battery by moving the rook to c8 and then threatening my a1 pawn with his queen, he generated too many offensive threats for me to deal with.

No forced move repeats. No defensive options. No potential checkmates.

The game was over. I laid down my king.

“I… don’t understand…” my opponent said, still with the same befuddled expression. “Even if you didn’t have the time to calculate the lines, common sense would tell you that the bishop sacrifice was reckless at best. Until that point there was no real way for me to win. If you had just advanced your pawns-”

“You’d have defended it, and we’d have tied.”

“More than likely, but there was a chance you could win. And you certainly wouldn’t have lost. Why would you throw the game like that? What are you trying to prove?”

“Prove?” Now I was confused. “I don’t get what you mean. I had nothing to prove. I just didn’t want a simple, boring draw. I saw a line that seemed interesting and I jumped at it, why does there have to be something else to it?”

“Because I saw how frustrated you looked up to that point.” Despite seemingly interrogating, he still maintained a friendly demeanour. “Every move that brought us closer to a draw seemed to make you more and more agitated.”

“Of course it did, it was boring. I hate gridlock chess.”

“Enough to throw an otherwise even match? That’s not how it seemed to me. It looked like desperation. Like pride.”

“Pride? Surely if it was pride I wouldn’t have played in a way that could lose the game?”

“Perhaps. But perhaps you felt you couldn’t play in a way that, in your eyes, could never win you the game. You’d rather go for a risky win than a safe draw, because to you a victory is the only thing that could preserve your pride.”

“What are you, my therapist? You think I’m obsessed with winning?”

“Pretty much. No one without an intense desire to win at all costs would play like that, don’t you agree?”

“I think you’re full of shit.” I threw his shitty psychoanalysis back in his face. What the hell did he know? “And besides, even if you were right, it wouldn’t matter now. I lost. What’s done is done. No point crying over spilled milk.”

I said that, but honestly I was pretty annoyed. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, it was my hubris that lost me that game. Whether it was overestimating myself or underestimating my opponent, I played carelessly and I got punished for it. That much was undeniable.

“I suppose you’re right about that,” Raibaru sighed. “That makes us 1-1, everything comes down to the last ma-”

“Great job, Sai-chan! You kicked his ass!”

“Naturally.”

He was cut off by the sound of the last match ending.