Assuming 2 Identities-
The Queen’s Gambit: PhoenixChess’ Journey
Almighty Pen of Pain: The Good Writer’s Journey
Prologue
“d4, d5, c4… Ah yes, the Queen’s Gambit…” PhoenixChess pushed his pawn to c4. As he glanced at the chessboard once again, he saw that the opponent took the “free” pawn. He put down his cup of tea and pushed 3. Nc3, the opponent followed with Nf6 and PhoenixChess pushed pawn to e4. He was down a pawn, but he had gained quite a competitive advantage from the opponent by taking the centre. “It was a good compromise for that pawn, of course.” He spoke. PhoenixChess won that game, he grinned.
The journey was obviously challenging, and the opponents were not easy to defeat either, my father was one of them, the one who expected the Réti opening or the Four Knights Game. I could’ve never won him if I stayed at the standard of my past.
Chapter 1: An Early Life Within The 64 Squares
I was introduced to chess in 2016 as I started playing chess with my dad. He was quite “perfect” at this chess thing. He was able to checkmate me in possibly every single game. I played more, practiced more of course but I just could not get better. I got the Pirate Chess LEGO chess set at the end of the year as a reward of my hard work in studies and after fiddling with it for a while, I gave up in the “sport”. I had technically “rage-quitted” the game in 2017 and just got out of it about entirely, with only less than 10 games played in the entire. A small chess boom happened in 2018, which influenced me to get back into chess, but now, with far more different opponents.
I was sitting in that same chair I had sat on for nearly one year, but this time, not to study, but the battle it out on the black and white board with 64 squares. I was playing against one of my friends, who was considerably more experienced than me in chess as I had quit the game last year, so I had lost most of my experience. Nevertheless, I continued with the game, being as calm and composed as possible. My opponent had set up quite a wonderful pawn structure playing with the black pieces. Pawns on a6, b7, c6, d7, e6, f7, g6 and h7. A capture of any pawn would mean either a fair trade or the worst scenario, an unfair trade of pieces. I was starting to worry, with me only playing the Four Knights Game with my father, I was unable to clearly think about what to do.
My palms were dripping with sweat and by now, about more than 10 people gathered around my opponent and I to watch the suspenseful game. My hand trembled a little before I pushed my bishop to c4. Just then, my opponent moved her queen out to f7, after the pawn there moved. I grinned as I noticed the blunder immediately, thus reaching towards the black queen, replacing that white square with my white bishop. I slowly but surely gained back all my confidence, I pushed for an attack on a defence. Although I still did not play that well, the defensive pawn structure proved to be ineffective against my full out attack.
Eventually, I managed to successfully checkmate my opponent.
Facing my next opponent, I beamed with optimism. In the face of “danger” and “crises”, I was usually positive, chess was the same situation. Living in a life playing this game that has been existent for the past 1500 years, I was very lucky to be able to learn the game. I looked at my next opponent’s face, he still seemed shocked that I had beaten my previous opponent. I was in a dilemma as well about whether it was an accidental win or not. I decided to focus on the game. Playing with the black pieces, I won the fight for the centre and even had a lead in development. My confidence level was in higher than ever. I would win this game, win more, and win all the games that would follow, I sought “revenge”, a payback or so I thought it was. I was going to crush my dad at chess one day. Snapping my mind back to the game, I gave a warm smile to my opponent.
“Check-Mate”
Chapter 2: Ascension
It had been quite some time since I played chess. I mean I had played chess with my dad, and I continued to lose, as usual… I trained with logic and playing with my friends, which barely helped. At the end of the year 2019, I decided to challenge my dad to a game. My fate was clearly not yet determined, but I could see confidence crumbling deep in my heart. History would repeat itself most of the time, I thought. I shrugged that thought away and prepared myself mentally for the game. Walking to the sofa slowly, I pushed my hair up, grabbed my
glasses from the table, adjusted it onto my face and finally sat down. I breathed in, then out again, trying desperately to compose myself.
Deciding to take the white pieces to gain an advantage, I played my move, Nc3, it was followed by 3 more knight moves from both of us. I fixated my eyes on the board, making sure I would not blunder. As I continued playing, I could still see that black was still having an advantage over me. I launched an attack in the centre immediately, blundering a knight but I still managed to maintain central dominance on the chess board. My opponent started trading, which I declined most of the time, knowing that it was not advisable to trade when down pieces. Both of us were starting to see sweat on each other’s forehead and clearly we were stressed. I was winning somehow. I scanned the chessboard with my eagle eyes for any weak points, I spotted a fork immediately, I check the king and took his rook afterwards since I was forking both his pieces.
Now, I was up by about a few points, so I decided to trade queens since it would be advantageous for me, who was ushering this into an endgame quickly by simplifying. I was clearly winning but my carelessness was overwhelming due to the stress and pressure I was under, thus causing me to immediately blunder a bishop. “Damn…” I sought “revenge”. Suddenly, the flame in my heart was instantly lit up and I was eager to win the game, which would be an excellent achievement. I played every move with caution, eventually forcing my opponent to sacrifice his last most powerful piece, which was his rook. I quickly promoted one of my pawns to a queen and without delay, I checkmated the person who I had taken eternity dreaming to beat him. However, I had more aspirations and thus I set up this website to freely write and express my views.
I wrote and played chess to relieve the stress I was feeling. As I established the website along with a few of my friends. My interests in writing went undiscovered at first and chess was still my main thing but now the order was switched around. I gave up the opportunity to play more chess and hone my chess skills to do creative writing.
I had ascended up one of the steps of the long journey.
This one game would change the way I played and viewed chess. Once a game of a sure-lose, now it was a game of strategy, skills and maybe a stroke of luck. I had always strived for a win instead of admitting defeat, I was not ready to give up anytime soon. The war is far from over, as far as I knew. Battle would rage on, for years to come, in my mind and also on the 64 squares of that sacred board. This war would continue, and I had won a major victory in defeating my dad for the first time, it was time to get somewhere with chess.
3 years was long enough to gain experience for chess, but I felt that it was not enough. 2020 was one of the roughest years of my life. Covid-19 and Home-Based Learning did impact many people in the world, of which including me, to play chess quite actively with their family. The 2020 Chess Boom was a major success, with some even calling 2020 the Year of Chess. After undergoing a “circuit breaker”, technically a lockdown here, chess became quite a family friendly game, a suitable, strategic board game that was possible to play at home during the pandemic season.
I was no different, except for the fact that I did not know about the world of chess that much or about chess.com. However, I played many games at home, most of the times with my father. The launch of Netflix Series: The Queen’s Gambit, spurred chess lovers to the next level and encouraged a vast majority of the world to start playing this fun yet strategic game. Confined to my house my family were, I was training in chess with my father in secret. I was still too used to playing the old openings and for 3 years, there were only 1 or 2 different variations I played for the opening.
Chapter 3: The Good Writer Rising
It was about 11 months into 2020 and I was furiously working on D&KB Writing, I realised that managing a whole website was not going to “waste my time” on chess again, so I played fewer games in December 2020, spending the December holidays to hone my creative writing skills and as the pandemic progressed along, the activity I did mostly at home was to write on the computer, modifying and improvising the skills and as 2021 arrived, I went into secondary school with writing still as my main hobby. The first half of the year got me working on many series and stories on my computer and eventually also on my phone.
My first series released was Superfriends, followed by an incomplete series of Bed-wars. As I started getting into Harry Potter in late 2020 to early 2021, I also started writing some fan-fiction about the story. I was at first quite impressed with my own works but soon, I realised that there was way more for me to improve on, like my vocabulary and sentence structure, which were serious deficiencies in my writings. Since our establishment, D&KB Writing has about 100 creative writing works on our blog and this is just one of them.
I decided to also get a writing nickname so as to remain anonymous on the website and at first I did not know how to choose. I decided to be humble and took the identity of The Good Writer, just good but never perfect as I believed there would always be room for improvement that could possibly in any area of writing. As I progressed on my writing career, I started gaining fame and I have taken part in 2 competitions within the school and I have received the good news that I have officially gotten runner-up prize for one of them. That was quite motivating that my writing was actually recognised by some people, which was quite cool, gaining some “fame”. Do you not agree?
Chapter 4: The Queen’s Gambit
I was fully exposed to chess in 2021. Watching YouTubers like GothamChess (IM Levy Rozman) and GMHikaru (GM Hikaru Nakamura) play chess, I slowly got to know of different new openings. The chess titles and watching guides to chess from GothamChess gave me the best advice, boosting my chess. As I watched GM Magnus Carlsen climb to World Champion, I signed up for a chess.com account, looking forward to playing chess with other people around the world. I found my first idol, which turned out to actually be GothamChess as I learnt most of my openings from him, so I improved much in chess. His humorous personality also made watching him fun as well.
The chess community of the world was way bigger than I actually expected and after putting my skills to the test constantly, I was shocked at the style people played chess. I suffered scattered losses here and there. After putting my skills to the test, I started specialising in one of the intermediate openings: The Queen’s Gambit. I viewed it as my signature opening as it was a poisonous opening to me, where there are many threats to look out for. After the games that I played in 2018, I now built my strengths to have excellent openings, good development and a very important lesson of all, a solid pawn structure that can aid my position and offer serious protection for my king.
One day, I was playing a (15 min+10 sec/move) game. I played the Queen’s Gambit as usual and it turns out I managed to trick the opponent into taking the c4 pawn, turning the game into a Queen’s Gambit Accepted. Thus, I got a good position and excellent development, taking full central control and winning back the pawn he took from me too. My opponent, although way higher rated than me in terms of ELO rating, had fallen for my vicious trap. I launched an attack in pursuit for a win against black. After the opponent lost his rook, he resigned the game and I had forced my opponent to virtually shake hands with me. I had won with my signature opening.
The end results were not always that positive. In the early days when I played the Queen’s Gambit, I got the Queen’s Gambit Declined: Albin Counter-Gambit. I casually took the pawn on e5, but I unexpectedly fell into the Lasker Trap in which caused me to lose within 25 moves. The Albin was an even more poisonous Counter-Gambit that is played specifically against the Queen’s Gambit since it is very easy to blunder the pawns and even the major pieces of the board. This opening was quite effective against most people who might think that the c4 pawn is actually free. Till now, I have been actively using the Albin Couter-Gambit when playing against the Queen’s Gambit with black. I now play against some of my secondary school friends, who are reasonably fine at the foundations in chess but are not too skilled yet.
As a dude with a creative playing style, and also a chess personality of Grinder, I play positionally, am very aggressive, intuitive, and calm in games. This enabled me to be a more strategy-based player and also more composed than others.
“The Queen’s Gambit. Alas, one of the most powerful yet tedious opening for intermediate chess players that is. I bit onto my knowledge of complicated pawn structures after the opening. I was playing against a 1200+ Rated ELO, the Albin Counter-Gambit was useful, but it would not prove effective, possibly even turning your advantage into a disadvantage. The use of soldiers were the most important in a tactical war, and in the tactical war of chess, use of pawns are the most important to play gambits against the other player, although losing 1 or 2 pieces, you could gain a rather competitive advantage. The war on the chessboard was tense with suspense, with both players thinking about their next move. My opponent had blundered so I took his free pawn, turning the tides of the game around completely as I built up a complicated pawn structure. Nothing more was needed to win the game so I forced the opponent to resign afterwards in the game.
As Elizabeth Harmon dominated the chess world and took many GMs by surprise. A woman grandmaster who played in a Netflix Original series. From Bobby Fischer to Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Hikaru Nakamura and the current world champion: Magnus Carlsen.
Chapter 5: PhoenixChess Rising
As the Chinese people say, the emperor (King) is the Dragon, and the empress (Queen) is the Phoenix. The Queen’s Gambit, being mainly about opening up the queenside as well, focuses to try bringing the queen out earlier in the game as well. Thus, I nicknamed myself PhoenixChess, assuming two identities myself, separately The Good Writer and PhoenixChess. I slowly tried games of different timings and while I mostly play 1 minute bullet games nowadays, I still play 3 minute blitz games and occasionally 10 minutes rapid games when I have the time to. With my Peak ELO rating for Rapid being 1266, I wish that I could get a higher rating for bullet. Here’s an excerpt from one of the bullet tournaments I played.
“I did not even have much time to prepare for the next game, neither could I be quick enough to grab my water bottle for a sip. The tournament was tense as I held out in second place for the arena. I glanced at my opponent’s clock, wasting yet another 5 seconds. I quickly played my move and looked to flag my opponent on time although he seemed to have 10 seconds more than me. Pre-moving some of my pieces, I managed to run on my opponent’s time. I played my last move, which was delivering a check to my opponent’s king at the last second and I had won, by time. I had already risen to 1st place in the whole tournament, but also the constant pressure and anxiety. Maintaining the top 3 would mean winning nearly every single game afterwards. I immediately pressed the button “Next Arena Game” without delay.
I hesitated for a moment before moving pawn to d4.”
I participated mostly in 1 Minute Bullet Arena, 30 Seconds Hyper Arena and occasionally the 3 Minutes Blitz Arena. I heavily relied on my experience and time management skills. With my heart racing and adrenaline pumping, I gained motivation and was determined to win. My Bullet rating soared but after playing chess for too long, my brain has started malfunctioning, losing some of the hard work I had to put in to raise my bullet rating. As I did not rely entirely on theory but instead creative and intriguing ways of development. Below there would be a few excerpts from experiences in playing chess.
“It was a rainy night, one of those days where I just got to play against people in chess.com along with my dad. Starting to play a 15 min+10 sec/move game, I started off by playing the Queen’s Pawn Opening with d4, the opponent played c5 and after I took the pawn, afterwards he played Nc6, which clearly showed me he knew the theory on playing the Sicilian Defence, a very high level opening usually used by only players that are above 1600 ELO rating. He had blundered his pawn as he was unable to understand that the Sicilian Defence can only be played against e4. I quickly took advantage of a very open and unprotected centre from black, forcing him to back up the knight from the centre. I was quite lucky and at the point where I was at one of my peak ELO, the 1200s, it was starting to get harder and harder to maintain a fixed ELO.”
“Swift and decisive, we are the ones. I thought about this quote, and I thought it described bullet chess players quite perfectly. Thinking about the top bullet players like GMHikaru, I smiled. The 30 second Hyper Arena was arriving, 30 seconds was not a lot of time compared to a 1 minute game obviously and although chances of you flagging your opponent on time, you yourself are also at risk of a flag.”
“It was a catastrophe. I had been losing blitz games as checkmate came to early, bullet seemed too fast, blitz seemed to skill+time based, which was not really good for me, looking at the fact that I would rather play speed with a little skill only or just skill itself. I stopped for a moment to think. I think I would definitely prefer speed and I decided that bullet would be my main speciality that I looked to improve on.”
Chapter 6: The Bongcloud
It felt that chess had a bright future for me, both a stress reliever and fun board game to play, I was keen to improve as much as I could when I could. Chess has a culture, not just a game of plain strategy but teaches you daily habits like time management, priority management and maybe even the big idea of The System of Chess. It was a whole system: connecting the 32 pieces on the 64 squares; two sides, black and white, fighting for glory and victory; the theory of a complicated yet easy to learn mind game. As Bushnell’s law goes well: All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.
After playing a while, under GMHikaru’s influence, I started playing the King’s Pawn Opening: The Bongcloud, which was supposed to one of the rubbish openings I have ever seen in my life and since I am obviously not a Grandmaster, winning with this opening was practically impossible since it was so trash, turns out it proved to be quite an effective opening.
Soon, I switched fully to physical chess with a 21 inch x 21 inch chessboard and chess pieces. I had also gotten a chess clock that could be used during my games, and it was technically the full set including the scorebook to record the moves. With the chess.com premium membership, I could slowly train over the holidays for my chess skills.
Epilogue
I sat on the table specially prepared for me to play chess on. I looked at the big and wide chess board, pieces already on its respective squares. The Queen’s Gambit and the tactics of deception possible. I grinned from eye to eye, it was a winning game. I was going to win, or so I thought. My opponent should be worried. “I am PhoenixChess, and it’s M1. Checkmate…” I left the “playing hall”. It felt good, I had gotten my sweet revenge.
There are large ELO rating fluctuations due to the fact that my play was quite inconsistent and with time as a pressure although in rapid games, it was not easy to play certain positions that were good. It was also because I was an enlightened player in the board game that occasionally blundered when I was stressed out playing something I was unable to deal with with counter-play or the creation of counter-attacks.
I was closing in to my goal to get above 1300 for my rapid games rating. Looking forward to win a few more games to get to my goal of course. While the chess boom and I have influenced a lot more people in the world and people in my class to play chess as well, which I thought was quite a good thing be cause although it is a mind game that challenges your brain to think, it can also be very fun to people who are passionate for chess like me and would spend probably 1-2 hours every day just to play the game. However, you do not really need to worry since I am still going to write stories but just that for now, I might be considering to become a chess writer and write more about interesting chess stories and skills related. I probably write this as I thought that I wanted people to know my small “chess career” and how it progressed throughout the years I have been playing. I am very sure that my brain cells have been increasing in the recent years and months that I have been playing the game.
I was on the “online chessboard” yet again. I was playing with my Dad this time. I lost the first game due to my carelessness and because the time was 15 minutes + 10 seconds/move. Afterwards I played 6 more games, two 1 minute bullet games, one 3 minute blitz game, one 5 minute blitz game and two more 5 minute + 5 seconds/move game. I won all of the games, playing the Bongcloud, 2 games by timeout and 4 games by a clean checkmate. One of my major scores and insane openings. At first I wondered if I was still sane, I had finally gotten to the standard of being able to win more than 50% of the games against my father. Finally, after 5 years, I have caught up with my father’s standard, it was now time to return the “abuse” that had lasted 5 years.
I picked up the king on the miniature chessboard and examined it as I threw my uniball pen in the air and caught it in mid-air. I put down the king back onto e1. The soft “knock” enlightened my writing skills yet again and I lowered my head again, engrossed in the next work I was going to produce.
~THE END~
Credits:
Pg 4- First Excerpt: In a Rapid EXP
Pg 4-Second Excerpt: Fire the Gun: Bullet in A Nutshell
Pg 5-Third Excerpt: Blitzing Away
Written by: PhoenixChess/The Good Writer
Phoenix on its chessboard,
Never draw but to mate,
No resigns to play all the way,
Soaring high as it is with Chess.
Success or Failure,
Process and lesson be all,
Never giving up nor shutting down,
Shall patience be the value.
Throwing gambits and defences,
An opening will prevail fast,
Developing pieces, Never hanging pieces middle game,
Checkmate or Resignation,
With either strategic endgames.
Trash talkers ain’t talkers,
No influence continue walking,
All the way no mate no end,
Persistence and skills,
The best for PhoenixChess
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