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Simple notepad chess4/6/2023 Because now you have”- she checked her watch-“ four hours until the next game, which means that you have four hours to think about the fact that you got beat by this kid.” She tapped the board. You’re a talented player, but you have to slow down and think more. “It’s okay if the loss hurts you a little,” she said. If you had made this move,”- she put the white king in check-“ you would have won the game.” She leaned back in her chair, her gaze fixed on Sebastian. When you made this move,”- she captured the white pawn, as Sebastian had done-“ you lost the game. “This is the thing,” Spiegel said, moving the pieces back to the point where they were when Sebastian had gone for the easy pawn. Sebastian made the moves, understanding how one more check would have saved his bishop and sealed the game. Spiegel looked at him and said “Show me.” “Remember, when I ask you a question, you don’t have to answer right away. Sebastian stared at the board evaluating the move. On the other side of the board, his opponent took his bishop and Sebastian’s advantage started to slip away. But in this move he had missed the threat. Rather than keep the pressure on, Sebastian went for an easy score: taking a white pawn with his queen. His opponent moved his king one square out of the queen’s range. His opponent countered, drawing a pawn up to block the path. He pushed his queen forward, checking the white king. If you can stop doing that, you’re going to do very, very well.”īy the thirty-fifth move, Sebastian recovered completely from his early errors. “You were playing in some ways an excellent game,” she told him, “and then once in a while, you moved superfast and you did something really stupid. As the game progressed, Spiegel praised his good ideas and asked him to come up with alternatives to others. “Very clever,” she said when he took the knight. Spiegel resumed moving pieces and examining the game. I’m very, very, very upset to be seeing such a careless and thoughtless game.” But you do something without even thinking about it? That’s not okay. “Look, if you make a mistake, that’s okay. If you continue to play like this, I’m going to withdraw you from the tournament, and you can just sit here with your head down for the rest of the weekend. In the face of this obvious challenge to what he did, Sebastian looked down. “We did not bring you here so that you could spend two seconds on a move,” she said with an edge in her voice. “How long did you spend on that move,” she asked. His opponent quickly pounced and took a pawn just four moves into the game. “Well, let’s see,” said Spiegel as she started to re-create the game on a chess board. The teacher for ensuring students try their best, the student for having lost to someone better. “Good strategies.”Īnd this is the point where many of us would simply say something along the lines of “did you do your best?,” in which case the likely response is “Yes.” Everyone is at least let off the hook. Sebastian explained that the other guy was simply better. Sebastian flopped into the chair and handed her his notepad, where he’d recorded all the moves for both players in the game. Sebastian, feeling sorry for himself, slouched into the room, his head held low, and approached Spiegel. It was customary to come back to the room for a postmortem. Union B was the makeshift home for his chess team from Intermediate School 318 in Brooklyn.Įlizabeth Spiegel, the school’s chess teacher, was waiting. Sebastian shook hands with the boy who had beaten him and walked back to Union B, the conference room down the hall. A few moves later, the collapse was complete. Then he made a mistake, squandering his advantage. At the 2011 National Junior High Chess Championship, he was looking strong and heading towards a victory. Sebastian Garcia made a mistake, but he couldn’t figure it out.
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