Why do people want what they want, and how do they know that they really want it?
Albert Hu
The opening moves are played from structure and habit.
A critical push
Tennis and piano started at six and ran all the way through high school. Years later they're hobbies I can always fall back on, which makes it easy to forget that the first push was external: someone signed me up. Chess was different. Nobody enrolled me, I never had a coach, and no one would have noticed if I'd stopped. Whatever force moved the first piece must have been internal.
The knight steps back, and the center is suddenly a question.
Objects in motion stay in motion
Newton's first law reads applies to physics, yet behaves like biography. Most people keep going in the direction they're already going, not because they chose it but because turning costs energy and continuing costs none. For a long time I didn't have a path so much as a velocity: the next tournament, the next season, the next exam. Each was important, yet none of them asked where the line was pointing. A push that only keeps the last push going isn't a decision, even when it appears that way.
The bishop finds a nice diagonal, and the rook on f1 is under fire.
That's Life
A pawn given for an attack that wasn't there. Some choices are inaccuracies you can justify; this one spent something that doesn't come back. There's no version of the position where the pawn returns to e5, and no version of the year where the time returns either, and that’s just the way life is.
The pawn is taken, and the file is open.
My Way
The knight landing on g5 is the logical followup, and the move that's already made is the only one you get to build on.There's no line in the book for what to do after a mistake, since the book assumes you won’t make any. I used to think of this part as finding the right way, as if the right way could be identified and located. Two players with the same pieces will reach different games, both were right to, and both are finding their own style, their own way to play.
Sometimes you have to close a door to open a window
Keeping every option open feels like freedom, yet functions like paralysis. Three doors each cracked an inch are the same as three doors shut since you can't walk through any of them. d5 weakens the center and gives up flexibility, and in exchange, we keep the initiative. I spent a long time not being sure what I wanted to do. I'm still not 100% sure, but I'm committing to computer science.
Mining gold with a wooden pick
In Minecraft you can find gold on your first day and still walk away with nothing, and luck follows the same rule. The potion in Harry Potter that makes everything go your way is golden too, and it still only works for someone who knows what to do when a door happens to be unlocked. The pick is the bottleneck to the gold, and I want to be holding something better than wood before the next vein shows up.
The pawn takes, recapture with the pawn to control d4 and e5, and the knight comes back into the game.
Everybody has a plan
h4 was a move that set up an attack, but is actually refuted. My plans and schedules are sometimes like this: Ideal in theory, but refuted in practice. The lesson isn't to stop planning, however. A plan is an idea about a future position, and the thing worth building is the habit of looking at the board before reaching for the move that was planned in a calmer room.
A pawn trade, a knight trade, and the position has cleared slightly
Sometimes you have to close a window to open a _______
An unclear position, but the game continues.
Why do people want what they want, and how do they know that they really want it?
Open a window.