How Chess helped me survive Lockdown.

It's 31st in January today. Vaccines have rolled out pretty much everywhere around the world. Lockdown is over, but we still haven't completely gotten over Corona Virus. All in all, the pandemic was a roller coaster ride for me, a painful one. I was struggling to keep myself at home since I had always been that guy who couldn't live without outdoor sports. With basketball and badminton being shut completely, Chess was something I didn't expect to give me a shimmer of light. So here's "How Chess helped me survive Lockdown".

My chess history dates back to the time when I was 3 or 4. My Nani was at my home and she was getting extremely bored. So, she thought of introducing chess to me so that I could play with her. Obviously, she used to beat me easily, but I had my revenge every time my Mom played with her, and she defeated my Nani way easily! Those were some fun days. But fast forward to 2020, I hadn't played chess for a good 10 years. Then something happened which would completely change my lockdown days. So, I videoed on youtube and I landed on a video that would completely change my lockdown days, a chess video. Nothing special about it though, it was just some experienced chess masters analysing a classical game. But, it had caught my eye, because I ended up watching that video for HOURS on repeat! I was intrigued by the pieces, the names of the squares etc... Ok, let me get something straight off the table. I always had the habit of calling chess pieces as Sipahi (the pawn), Ghoda( the knight), Unth (the bishop) etc, because that's what most Indian households teach their children! And boy it was so difficult to adjust to the English names! And the squares, Oh god just don't talk about them. I was so new to the E4 E5 system! Still, I wanted to learn and re-establish my relationship with chess.

So, I made a chess.com ID and started playing some chess daily. And that was one of the best decisions I had made during the lockdown. I played blitz and bullet games, but Bullet was something that had always amused me. Imagine, where chess is assumed to be a slow and peaceful sport, there comes BULLET CHESS with all the guns and ammo! ( By the way, this is just metaphorical, chess has no bullet and ammo it is just a very fast 1 min version of chess). I loved that variant. By the way, this is mid-2020 now. I enjoyed chess so much that I and my friend made a video on youtube on our channel too, where we are playing chess. GothamChess became my go-to chess channel whenever I was on Youtube. I'm telling you guys if you wanna get started with chess, or just enjoy chess as a sport, go check out his channel it is such a wholesome channel for chess, just amazing.

With my interest in chess skyrocketing, I made sure that I get most of my close friends to start playing chess too! And I must tell you guys, playing chess with your friends is just way better than playing it with a random stranger. I love discussing openings, endgames and various other aspects of the game with people on Twitter and youtube. Also, the Chess Olympiad 2020 fueled my interest in chess. The rise of Samay Raina, Vidit Gujrathi, Chess base India and many others as Chess YouTubers helped in staying connected to chess. I remember cheering for India with a World Cup level excitement during the Chess Olympiad!

Look guys, let me tell you something really important. Chess is hard. It's irritating, frustrating and sometimes, boring too. But, just don't lose interest. That's the key. Manage to take out time just to play a rapid 10 min game daily and you're good to go. And I'm not a qualified player when I'm saying this stuff. But I'm a hardcore Chess Enthusiast for sure!

So, I'm just done with all my chess stories for you. Just reach out to me from where-ever you can and I'll make sure we play a game of chess someday!