Speed Chess and the Martial Arts

Posted by Sam Kressin in Personal Journal

Speed ChessI’m 21 years old. I had had been working out a boxing center off of Santa Fe Road in San Diego that no longer exists the head coach in there he tells me if I play lots of chess specifically speed chess it will make my boxing better. He explains speed chess will train my brain to work faster and more decisively. Immediately I begin searching for someone to play chess against and this nerdy kid at the college accepts my challenge. We meet in the quad by his dormitory. He pulls out this really nice pocket chess set that fits into a leather pouch with his name engraved across it. As he takes out the pieces and proceeds to set them up I tell him I want to play speed chess. I explain the rules; we can only take 1-2 seconds before making a move. He does NOT like that idea at all and wants to play regulation but agrees to my request. We start playing I’m making my moves in under a second. He’s taking FOREVER. I keep telling him to hurry up. He proceeds to obliterated me.

I tell him, “look you have to move faster this is speed chess.”

“Okay,” he says.

We play a bunch of games and he destroys me every single game. While he did play faster he still took enough time make sure he wins every-time. Then I realize I may never be able to beat this kid in a game of chess but I will always be able to kick his ass in a boxing match.

Photo Credits: Photo by Jason Brown used under Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic.

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