- April 19, 2024
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The world chess championship brings out the nerd in all of us. Or at least it should.
BY BRIAN MCMILLAN | MANAGING EDITOR
I was in the Ormond Beach Observer office on Thursday morning when I let out a gasp. “Oh my goodness,” I said, staring at my computer screen.
“What?!” said Emily Blackwood, our new reporter.
“There are some pretty intense chess players in Ormond Beach,” I said. Relatively new to the area, I was looking at the ratings of players in the Daytona Beach Chess Club, some of whom were rated well over 2000. My rating, according to an iPhone app that I use for playing chess, is hovering at a lowly 1500.
Emily was relieved, and then she scowled at me. She said, “You made it sound like there was a murder or a car wreck or something.”
Poor, poor Emily. She didn’t understand just how important chess is. She probably didn’t even know the latest news in the 2013 FIDE World Chess Championship, which was capturing the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people around the world. She seemed to think chess was for nerds.
But we know better, don’t we, Dear Reader?
We know all about 22-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, a sometime clothing model who is the highest rated player in history at 2870. We know by now that he just defeated the defending world champion, 43-year-old Indian Viswanathan Anand, marking the beginning of a new era. And we know that for most of November, hundreds of millions of people around the world were watching the games live. Sure, it was being broadcast at an inconvenient time for most Ormond Beachers (4:30 a.m.), but is that too much to ask to witness chess history?
Considering it was obvious Emily would never live up to my standards as a chess pal, I decided to find a fellow chess enthusiast to hang out with in Ormond Beach, and I was able to track down one of the stars of the Daytona Beach Chess Club, Jim Ledford, whose rating I had been admiring online. He also happens to be an attorney with an office just on this side of the border from Holly Hill on South Yonge Street.
He welcomed me into his office, where I sat across the desk from his bright blue, leather, Florida Gators office chair.
Ledford’s rating is 2030, meaning he’s considered at the “expert” level. He wore a blue polo shirt and tan slacks, and his hair had just a hint of wildness, which means he’s a genius in disguise.
I skipped the small talk and got right into the important stuff: his chess cred.
He plays several hours each day, he said. When he was younger, he played 10-12 hours a day and even moved to California in 1979 in an attempt to become a professional chess player. That didn’t work out, so he went to law school instead. He peaked at a level just under 2200 and, in a 1981 tournament, beat other players who were just under the “grand master” level of 2400. To learn one chess opening as thoroughly as possible, he hand-wrote the text of an entire book he was reading and followed all the extensive lists of associated moves. That task took him several hundred hours, he said.
I admit it: I was in awe. How could you not be? Checks dig a man with moves like that.
Before I left, I invited myself into Ledford’s law library for a game of speed chess. But that meant we would need a timer. “I’ll be right back,” he said. He returned with a black case that held his official board and pieces and digital timer.
My hero! I decided then and there I wanted an identical case for Christmas.
As you might expect, he destroyed me in speed chess. Then, in an act of supreme generosity, he said he could recall all the moves of the game we had just played. "Do you want to replay it and figure out where you went wrong?" he asked.
We went through the game again. His secretary walked by the open door to the library and made a smart remark that revealed her opinion of two grown men playing a board game during the work day.
But the spell broke when I asked Ledford about the world championship. I asked if he had been waking up early to watch the games live. I already knew the answer: Of course he was watching them!
To my dismay, he said he didn’t. “My mornings are important in what I’m doing, so I don’t have time,” he said.
No time? To watch the end of an era? To witness the drama as it happened? His mornings are more important than that?!
I left the office puzzled. I had been blind-sided by reality. I felt as if I had just taken off the mask of Batman.
As I drove away in the rain, I thought back to another exchange I had earlier that morning with Emily Blackwood. Our advertising account manager Sarah Hechler had just complimented Emily on her boots. Emily responded by saying she liked Sarah’s shirt. Like any concerned boss would, I waited for a quiet moment, cleared my throat, and gently corrected my new, young employee.
“Emily, just so you know, it’s not good to give a compliment immediately after receiving one. It sounds fake,” I said. “You might want to write that down.”
She gave me a smile and said, as if patting me on the head, “OK, I’m going to take social advice from somebody who gets excited about chess scores.”
She walked out the door without another word.
I sighed and returned to my email. Some people just don’t get it.
