When I was younger it was a holiday tradition to put the fire on, enjoy a nice cup of hot chocolate and engage in a brutal bloody game of chess

Unfortunately for my father this tradition stopped very quickly as, despite his best efforts, I had clearly surpassed him at the young age of 11. Like any father, in an attempt to salvage his dignity, he would avoid to play me. I can't blame him, where I was practising on a regular basis at my school chess club, his only form of practice came from this annual tradition and from a small handful of holidays throughout the year. As a result, this seemingly harmless holiday tradition died out pretty quickly...

A semi-accurate depiction of my father losing...

This year was different however. I decided to enjoy it with my partner at her parents house this year. Talk of my chess prowess had echoed through the family and her father was keen to give me a game. Now normally, as any club player can attest to, whenever it is revealed that we can play chess, we often get a barrage of cliche responses from normal people:

These range from:

"Ah chess I played that at school!"

"I haven't played in years!"

"I can't remember the rules but doesn't that horsey piece jump over other pieces in an L-shape?"

"I will have to give you a game later on"

The latter statement always perplexed me. Imagine this, if you were someone who played football everyday - for a local team, local club and you would watch football everyday - If then another person then came up to you and said: "Ah football, I played that at school once, let's have a quick game," if you were the former, you would most likely roll your eyes in disbelief! I can't imagine how titled players must feel like when they get challenged by the average person.

Boxing day arrived, and my partner's father got out his prized possession: A beautiful chess set with board with chessmen that looked like saxon warriors:

Not overly dissimilar from this set. He had apparently got it from the "Wood Green" chess shop (when there was one). If anyone can provide a picture of the set please let me know.

It can be difficult to play on a themed set versus your normal Staunton's sets. What was particularly hard about this set was that the bishops were the same size of the pawns! Perhaps this was his attempt to employ some sort of guerrilla tactics against me. Very clever!

Before embarking into battle my partner took me to the side for one minute:

"Be careful hun" she said, "My dad has never lost against any of his brothers" (he was the eldest of eight!). I barely took her words on board. How can an average person match up to a seasoned club player like myself I thought? Thus, like a medieval knight saying goodbye to her princess, I put down my vizier and headed to the battlefield.

In line with holiday traditions, aptly our battlefield was her parent's dining table, which had a full view of the "Sound of Music," the musical, blaring in the background. It was clear that my partner was to not take any part in this fight. As I set up the pieces, as an automatic response I set up the white pieces on my side. Normally, if I was playing a beginner, I would always give them the white pieces as a gesture of good will to give them a chance.

"Ah I see you have set up the white pieces on your side, I will let you be white then," responded my partner's father.

"Oh no, I will let you be white if you like?" I responded offering to give a small edge to him. However he refused and so began our boxing day battle!

I started to worry here. My plans to swipe my opponent off the board in a few moves proved a decisive mistake. If Black played the move Kf8! it would appear that his earlier mistakes would put him off the hook. Could it be that I was about to lose!



Like a bolt of lightning the game ended abruptly. Nonetheless, for my opponent who was clearly out of practice, this was a thoroughly enjoyable game! We played again, with a change in colours, the next game he managed to hold me for 50 moves before I was able to grind him down in the endgame! An incredible achievement!



And so ended another year of festivities. However, I had finally found an opponent, who isn't really a chess player, to give me a fair game! It was my hope to continue this holiday tradition into next year! Only time will tell