Sunday, July 22, 2007

Prodigal Sons and Daughters

Here's a cheerio to my friend Nick who couldn't stop talking about his performance in the currently running NSW Grade Matches. Over steak and vino last Friday, actually he ordered orange juice, myself and some other fellow sat there as we had to read a print out of U1700 score table. Player no. 31 is the highest scoring and also has the highest percentage score across all divisions! Wow...well done mate, we said to him. For Nick this was a big turnaround after telling me over the last couple of years that chess is a complete waste of time! Now he might hate me now for revealing that but, really, I've got an important question in mind.

The question is: are there any of you, or do you know anyone, who once once left our game, holding some negative thoughts about chess (e.g. chess is a time waster, a life waster, etc) only then to make a comeback? We might call these guys our prodigal sons and daughters. I suppose there are some other questions like the reason for the comeback. What was the outcome - good, bad? And was the "second" relationship long-lasting?

It's a topic that's interested me in a while now actually because there is one other friend of mine, previously one of the state's most talented up and comers, who one day lost a game then suddenly just imploded! That was that for him. He just threw his books away, gave up the game, and never looked back. Since then I've been trying to think of some strategies to drag this fellow back. What can we do?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For the record Blair Mandla is 8 out of 8 for Parramatta in the Under 1900's

Anonymous said...

I think one of the main reasons people walk away from chess is that their ego gets the better of them. They cant stand losing games to people whom they consider to be "lesser mortals".

To those people all I can say is grow up or move on.