Teaching my Son to Lose
By: Joey Davidson
Tags: Chess, Queens Gambit, Kids, Nostalgia, Into The Breach

I played chess growing up. Not a lot, really. I would never say I’m good at chess. I just know how to play, I guess.

I played checkers first, with my grandmother. Grandma Buono was kind of ruthless when it came to checkers with a six-year-old. Within minutes of each match, she levied an onslaught of double- and triple-jumps, clearing the board and demanding “King Me!” again and again while I grappled with reality. Grandma taught me how to lose in that way. I had no choice — if I wanted to play again, I had to swallow my defeat and ask for a rematch before she returned to her place by the stove or in front of her pictures.

Chess replaced checkers when we set up our family computer sometime around 1993 or 1994. We had a top-of-the-line Packard Bell, complete with a textured gray finish that would yellow from cigarette smoke over the years it spent in our spare bedroom.

Obsessed with Windows Chess

The machine ran Windows 3.1, and that OS had Windows Chess preinstalled. If you weren’t alive before the internet was as ubiquitous as it is today, you’ll never really understand the initial thrill and immediate disappointment that arrives with a new computer. Without access to the internet as a kid, you either tooled around with the software that came bundled with the computer or you hoped your parents needed to run to Office Max so you could peruse the $0.99 clip art and encyclopedia CD-ROMs while they checked out.

Windows Chess, 1993

Windows Chess became my obsession. I had no idea what I was doing, so I learned through trial and error. I sunk hours and hours into the experience, trying new approaches and strategies. I don’t think I ever won a single game. I came close. I remember whittling the computer player down to only a handful of pieces and, at best, forcing a stalemate.

I had to look up stalemate in our family dictionary back then. It was just a fancy way to say “tie.” I was bummed.

It’s hard to pinpoint when I stopped playing chess as a kid. My parents didn’t really play the game, though I could push my dad into a few rounds of it when he was home from work. Windows Chess faded away, and I moved on to other things.

Until middle school.

Chess with White Kids Like Me

I was a mess of a kid until middle school. I had no friends, I was on the bigger side and picked on because of it, and I was always getting in trouble during class. It wasn’t until middle school that I took a few placement tests and moved from standard classrooms to the Alpha program.

You know Alpha. Maybe your school didn’t call it Alpha, but you had an Alpha. The Alpha program was where they sequestered kids that “show more potential” than gen pop. It’s screwed up in hindsight. I went to a school with a large minority population, and my performance on tests pushed me into a room with the same group of rich white kids from fifth through eight grade.

Really. The school apparently still runs the program.

…The Alternative Learning Program for High Achievers (ALPHA). Students in ALPHA receive an accelerated academic program in a separate setting with a compacted general education curriculum in all content areas.

Brace yourself. The kids in Alpha played chess. Shocking, right? A group of middle class white kids in an advanced placement program at a middle school were given chess boards and the opportunity to develop critical thinking while their peers piddled through teaching built so the school would do well on state-mandated standardized tests.

From age 11 through 13, I played chess every day during study hall and recess, giving me the opportunity to practice and get a lot better. I never got great. I wasn’t on a chess team, and I never learned concrete strategies beyond the Fool’s Mate and the Scholar’s Mate, two easy sets of moves to force opponents into checkmate quickly. But I practiced, and I wound up making friends who would go on to play chess with me during summer break and even, for one particular friend, a few times in college.

“Dad, what are you watching?”

My wife and I watched Queen’s Gambit for a week or two after the kids went to bed. One night, my son wandered downstairs for help with his head gear, which is rough stuff for a nine-year-old. We paused the show with Beth, the lead character, staring down pieces on a chess board.

“Is this show about chess?”

“Yep.”

“Is it inappropriate for me?”

“Yep.”

He went to bed at that.

It was the next morning when it came down from the closet where we keep our board games with my chessboard tucked under his arm. He asked me to show him how to play, so I did. Over the span of a week, my son picked up the basics of chess and was able to keep pace over the length of short games. He quickly learned how to protect his pieces, and I caught him on YouTube a few times looking up videos to learn more about the game.

He hasn’t beaten me yet, and I’ve never been the kind of dad to let my kids win. So, just like my Grandma, I beat him. I give him opportunities to take back the obscenely bad moves he makes when he’s rushing, and I only showed him the Fool’s Mate once. I don’t demolish him, but I make sure to win.

He’s taken to losing, too, finally.

This is a kid who used to sit down on the floor and cry after suffering defeat in Zingo and Go Fish. This is the same kid that cried all the way home from a lacrosse game after a one-sided tilt kept his team from even coming close to the other’s goal.

When he loses in chess, his first instinct has been to question the mate. “Can I get out of this?” “Are you sure this is checkmate?” “What if I did this?”

When he runs out of options, though? He looks up at me, smiling, and sticks his hand out to shake mine. He always asks to play again.

Normally, I have to return to my place by the stove.