Welcome to Rethink Retirement. A monthly blog series where I will explore different topics related to all things retirement. Each month I will answer questions and provide insight into this exciting and sometimes challenging time in your life.
For this month’s Rethink Retirement blog, I am thrilled to share a blog written by one of my former clients named Gary Solomon. Gary and I worked together, via Zoom for four months. At that time, Gary was about seven months away from retirement. Throughout our sessions we discussed different ways that Gary could keep himself active and engaged for his upcoming retirement.
During one of our conversations, Gary mentioned how he had written a few blogs in the past and really enjoyed it. I asked him if he’d thought about doing that more once he retired. He and I were on Zoom and I sat there looking at him. There was a silence for a few seconds. I watched Gary’s facial expression kind of freeze and he looked up. The suspense was killing me! Finally, he said, “You know, I never thought of that, but it’s a great idea. I love it!”
And the rest is history.
Gary finally did retire in November 2020—a little delayed because of COVID—and he continues to write and post his blogs on his website.
The blog I have chosen to share is called That Side Relationship. It is about his love for the game of chess that began when he was six years old and still continues today. Enjoy.
That Side Relationship
By Gary Solomon
Posted on December 14, 2021
I have been in that relationship now for over six decades. I’ve studied my partner relentlessly, yet I still have so much to learn. My partner has required me to employ strategic planning, pattern recognition, alternatives evaluation, calculation, logic, risk taking, decision making, time management and patience; and has drawn emotions from me ranging from elation to complacency to humility to, yes, even deep regret. My partner has constantly required me to stay calm under pressure. My partner in that relationship is the game of chess, with whom I remain passionate to this day.
I was six years old in 1961 when my uncle first introduced me to the game of chess. I vividly remember, upon entering his apartment, just off to the right in the living room, a beautifully engraved wooden chess table, with an inlaid brown and off-white board adorned with its classic Staunton wooden pieces.
How interesting that was to me, a table whose sole purpose was to host a game to be played upon.
Throughout my youth, we visited periodically. We’d have a catch with our mitts, toss the football, watch a game or two, but every time we visited, I’d wait for that magic invitation to play some chess, and plenty of chess we played. It started out instructional and soon progressed to playing for real. Back then, information did not bombard you, you had to go seek it out, so I began to supplement those visits with trips to the library and bookstores. I even subscribed to a journal from the United States Chess Federation. I got the New York Times on Tuesdays and Sundays as those contained chess columns. I discovered an entire universe to envelope me, with a seemingly infinite amount of material to learn. I willingly stepped through the portal; even then, I loved to learn, I loved to read, and I was loving getting better at chess.
Throughout elementary school, junior high school, high school, and even college, I sought out like minded friends with whom I engaged in battle after battle over the chess board. I was in high school when in 1972 when the explosion of chess onto the landscape of America was fueled by the Fischer-Spassky World Championship Match, even further heightening my interest. I sat glued to PBS on television, waiting for Shelby Lyman to advise us as the teletype began ticking, “and we have a move!”. I frequently played a friend who we both judged to be only marginally better than me, and he respected that marginality sufficiently that we would both only play our strongest opening lines against each other, whether playing white or black. Game after game unfolded with the first eight or nine moves always the same. It was the only way we could maintain winning chances against each other. I had another friend, who like me, excelled in mathematics. We sat together in the rear of honors math classes in high school, a pocket size chess set on our lap under the desks, playing each other as the teacher lectured. Every now and then, one of us would be called upon to answer a question on the blackboard, and we were usually able to redirect our attention, provide the answer, and then happily resume our play. I played chess with my friends in our apartments, outdoors alongside the basketball playgrounds while waiting our turn on the court, in dorm rooms at college, and with a colleague at work in an in-house library at lunchtime. Separated by many miles, every few years I still play a great friend with whom I am also extremely evenly matched, yet my entire body trembles with fear with each move I make.
When I was in eighth grade, I got my first early electronic microprocessor-based chess game, aptly titled Boris, the ancient forerunner of today’s take it for granted world champion caliber chess computers. Boris was a blue and white chessboard upon which sat the pieces, and it would detect your move when physically played and display it in chess notation in a display window. Similarly, it presented its move in the display window and required you to physically move its pieces upon the board. It was not a perfect system, but it was revolutionary for its time. Boris had six levels, and even back then, I had to play it at level six to get a competitive game. However, with the technology of the time, Boris required a couple of hours to move at that level, so I’d wake up, make a move, go to school, return home at lunch time, move again, and again then after school, and so on. Games took weeks to complete, but I did not care one bit. The thrill of living in that chess world of squares and pieces all encompassed me, and I was pleased to have a worthy competitor who could school me further.
My electronic play paralleled the evolution of technology, advancing from Boris to Sargon III, one of the first IBM PC based games, against whom I once won by exchanging a knight for three pawns. I later advanced to the Windows based Chess Master 2000, and ultimately to today’s world of internet and smartphone hosted games where I am back to playing people, all over the world, all the time, albeit it “virtually.” To date, I’ve played over two thousand such games. One particular virtual opponent and I have currently split 84 games to date evenly, each winning 42.
Like the grammatical rules of the English language, chess is a game of basic principles, yet there are often exceptions, and exceptions to those exceptions, and exceptions to those. Don’t put the knight on the side of the board where it only controls half its potential squares. Put the knight on the side. Advance that pawn. Don’t advance that pawn. Some lessons are counter intuitive, such as two adjoining passed pawns on the sixth rank, outweigh a rook whose worth is effectively five pawns. Pawns to be promoted in a bishop endgame must be on a file ending in that bishop’s color control.
Chess has borrowed terms from other languages to describe certain situations. There is “en passant”, from French, to describe an unusual pawn capturing possibility; “fianchetto”, from Italian, to describe a bishop strategically placed in an opening in the corner to control the long diagonal; and “zugzwang”, from German, to describe a perfectly sound position whereupon any potential move will only weaken it.
Chess is its own discipline. You can be smart, brilliant, intelligent, excel in other areas, have an advanced degree and still be a very poor player. You can be classically uneducated and excel in chess, such as Bobby Fischer who was a high school dropout.
So there you have it. My relationship with the game. The learning, the history, some opponents, some places I’ve played and the technology. Sure, there’s more to tell, but at this point it would only serve to dilute the story. The story has reached a state of zugzwang.
Retirement can allow you to try new things and develop your passions.
Reach out to me if you need a little help or simply have a question. My mission is to see you live your best retirement life!
Jennifer Rovet, CPRC
Retirement Coach
Retire Ready Canada
retirereadycanada@gmail.com
www.retirereadycanada.com
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