Sai and I took turns playing against Pep for a while, but the pink-haired menace had to leave early that day, leaving the silver-haired menace and I to round out the session alone (since neither of us had the privilege of leaving early).
“Well, there’s no point in the two of us sitting here and idling, wanna play a game? The two of us could do with the practice too,” I said.
“I suppose there’s little reason not to. If I must occupy the same space as you, I’d be glad for something to take my mind off the foul odour.”
“Are you saying I stink?”
“Of superiority.”
“Well I suppose that makes sense, I am superior.”
“Good grief.” Sai sighed at my completely shameless proclamation, taking the seat opposite me. “I thought you considered yourself to not be a narcissist?”
“I’m not saying I’m superior to everyone. Just that I’m superior to you.”
“How charming.”
It was determined that I would once again play white, and as I tended to do whenever I could, I played my beloved Vienna gambit. We played out the mainline, with Sai playing engine moves even after transposing to the Paulsen Attack. Considering I hadn’t seen her use the Vienna a single time, I was impressed that she was so familiar with the line.
“You really do know your theory, huh?”
“It is the backbone of the game. The Vienna is one of the most common and respected openings, after all. Any player worth their salt ought to know this much.”
“Memorising opening lines is all well and good, but every game diverges from theory eventually. You think you can keep up with your complete aversion to risk?”
“I suppose we shall see.”
Sai played the most common move after the Paulsen, which was to push the f-pawn two squares as a second defender for the knight, the bardeleben variation. The optimal move in this case is to kick the knight with the d-pawn, forcing it out of it’s strong attacking position and usually resulting in a trade of knights. But a line so simple and common was almost certainly once she had studied, so I played a far less optimal move. I took the pawn en-passant with my own e-pawn, breaking one of the most cardinal principles of chess: keeping pawn control of the centre.
Sai, who practically robotically followed the protocols of theory, took with her own g2 pawn, likely expecting to strengthen her position in the centre. The exact blunder I was hoping for.
The vicious check queen-to-h5 forces her king to move in front of her own queen, an enormous positional disadvantage as it both limits the movement of the queen and leaves the king in a compromised position. I follow this by snagging the d5 pawn with my knight, removing her knight’s only defender and forcing it to retreat in front of the king. With this, her mobility was greatly stifled and her position was far weaker than mine, both in terms of offence and defence. We continued to play out the line, I claimed the centre with my d pawn and activated my bishops as she attempted to mount a counterattack with her queen. Despite her attempts, however, the game continued to tip further in my favour, until she eventually laid down her queen.
“Dirty tricks again, is it?” I asked mockingly.
“Must you gloat? Though, I will concede. You are a better player than me, that much is now clear.”
“I’m pleasantly surprised that you have the humility to admit it.” I briefly considered further teasing her, but despite my misgivings on her as a person, I had no reason to actively antagonise her. “I think you have the makings of a good player, though. You made a bad move when the game left theory, and your defence broke down because of it, but you dealt with the situation relatively well after the fact. If you take that one bad move out of the equation, I’d say we weren’t far from an even match.”
“Perhaps so, but such a large caveat can hardly be ignored. Despite my many many hours spent learning this game, I still fall for such obvious traps. It’s somewhat disgraceful.”
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“Oh, don’t be so dramatic about it. You just need to stop thinking of theory as a rulebook and more as a guidebook.”
“Hmm? I’m afraid I don’t follow.” She tilted her head quizzically at me.
“Uhh… let me put it this way, when you took that pawn what went through your head?”
“I needed to get rid of the pawn and wanted to do it without sacrificing piece activity. I also wanted to move a pawn closer into the centre.”
“And what did you not consider?”
“Geh- the… active threat from the queen…”
“There’s your problem. You treat theory and principles like they’re hard rules and you try to play almost automatically. I can tell because of how fast you play your moves. You don’t think your lines through enough because you trust your understanding of the principles to carry you without putting in the effort.”
“I-I see…”
I’m not sure if it was embarrassment for making a relatively elementary mistake, or irritation that she had to take advice like me, but Sai looked away shamefully. It was understandable. No one wants to be told that the way they play is fundamentally wrong, let alone by someone they don’t like all that much. I don’t think I’d have been particularly happy in that position either. Though there was something bothering.
“Hey Sai, can I ask you a question? What’s with your fixation on theory above everything else? I’ve known players who rely too heavily on it before, but you’re… something else. It’s like you know every opening line to a tee, and you have a great understanding of the game, but the second your opponent plays something unconventional you crumble. What’s up with that?”
“An incredibly rude question, did your mother never teach you manners?”
“Sai.”
“...” Realising that I wasn’t prepared to let her just deflect away this time, Sai averted her gaze. She seemed reluctant to speak on the matter, but after a moment she simply sighed and began. “I’ve always prided myself on my exceptional memory. I butted heads with my classmates from the very moment I began school, but I didn’t care. I knew that, in this one aspect, I could beat any of them. So when the school decided to hold an amateur chess tournament, it was a no brainer. I would just memorise as many variations as possible and wait for my opponents to slip up. With that alone, I crushed every person I hated at that school.”
“That’s all well and good for a while, but considering how well you know the game you must have figured by now that that’s not enough.”
“You think I haven’t? I know. I will never be a truly great chess player if I can’t play outside of theory. But… the beauty of chess is in perfection. Following the principles of the game and finding the optimal move for the situation to slowly increase your domination. The way you play… it frustrates me.”
“Because I play novelties?”
“Because you play badly.” She tutted loudly, her distaste for my playstyle seemingly souring her mood even further. “You make moves that are nonsense. Utterly ridiculous ones with immediate losses and no long term gains, sacrifices with no real plan to capitalise, everything that goes against the precepts of chess theory. You play completely suboptimal moves with no hesitation whatsoever, as if your very objective is to ignore everything I know and love about this game. But the most infuriating part is that I still can’t beat you. I know what you’re doing wrong, I know why it’s wrong, but I cannot punish you for it. It’s as if you calculate the exact move that could most infuriate me at that moment. To be perfectly honest, just sitting down opposite you puts me on tilt. You anger me, not because you’re better than me, but because you should be worse.”
“Are you perhaps angry with yourself and not me?”
“Two things can anger me at once.” Her brow was furrowed, but after a silence she seemed to release much of her stress with a sigh. “Losing in general is of no consequence to me, but when I lose to you and your absurd gambits it flips my perspective on the game on its head. It makes me question what I thought I knew.”
“That’s because your perspective is flawed, even if not technically incorrect. You’re right in that my play is suboptimal, to the point that it would be agonising to anyone with a FIDE title. But that’s because I am simply not good enough to play perfectly. I have to take risks. If I just play theory to the letter, I’ll simply be playing the same game over and over again, losing to those who know the lines better than me and beating those who don’t. That chess may technically be optimal, but it’s boring. Cowardly.”
“Are you calling me a coward?”
“I’m calling you naïve. To believe that anyone can perfect their understanding of theory enough to play with that alone is unrealistic at best. But above all else, it’s dull. It’s estimated that there’s some ten-to-the-one-hundred-twentieth-power unique positions in chess. Why play the same ones that have been played tens of thousands of times before?”
“Why play those that you know are unlikely to lead you to victory?”
“Do you play to win, or enjoy yourself?”
“They are one and the same.”
“Then why do you keep playing against me?”
She didn’t answer. I suppose it was a question that had no good answer. I knew the frustration of losing to the same opponent over and over, and I knew the drive to continue to play against them regardless. What was the cause of it? Determination? Pride? Spite? People were prone to all three to a high degree. We are a species too stubborn to admit defeat even when we’ve been beaten to the ground time and time again. I suppose it’s human nature to be a sore loser.
“You well and truly infuriate me, I hope you understand that,” Sai said after a long silence.
“Oh? And I had just started to warm up to you.”
“Spare me the sarcasm.”
“I was being facetious, not sarcastic.”
“Die in a fire.”
For the dozenth time since we met just a week before, we fell into our habit of sniding each other over nothing. And yet, this time, I could swear I saw the curl of a smile on her face.