Little helper

Today, I had the coolest little experience.

I was sitting in a cafe with a cup of coffee, trying to kill some time. I had an appointment at 11 a.m. but it was only 10:15, and so I decided I’d hang out at the cafe, get some coffee and play chess on my MacBook until I had to leave.

Now, the chess program that comes with the MacBook is very powerful, and I sorta have a rivalry with it. The program doesn’t make any mistakes, per se, so you really just have to overpower it to win. Your play must be sound and aggressive.

I had the white pieces and I therefore made the first move. After a few minutes the program and I were deep into the game and I was lost in thought. Just so you should know, the computer and I were in a “French Defense”-type position. In such positions, the board is pretty cramped with pieces and players are forced to do much maneuvering before any attack can be launched.  

After move 12, I had gained the “initiative,” meaning I had a slight advantage and was controlling the flow of the game.

Anyway, so there I was, deep into the game and doing well, when this cute little kid -- he must have been 9 or 10 -- just sorta floated over to my table. 

I really had no idea where he came from. He was a small, mixed-race boy with light-brown skin and frizzy black hair.  I think he walked into the cafe with a white woman.  

At any rate, before I knew it, the boy was right beside me, looking at the game on the screen.

I didn’t really mind -- although, admittedly, having this curious kid right by my side was a little distracting -- and I just kept on playing. When I’m into a chess game, I don’t stop to talk with anyone.

But then he started talking to me.

“Spielst du Schach?” he asked, German for “Do you play chess?” I said, "Yeah." Then I asked him if he played. He said he also did, and we went on looking at my game.

I told him what I was aiming for, what my strategy was. My bishop and my queen,  I said, speaking in German and also using hand gestures, were working in tandem and were taking aim at black’s pawn on h7, the pawn right in front of black’s king. 

After I told him my strategy, he recommended a move; he recommended that I use my pawn to chase away the black knight on black's kingside. After all, he reasoned, this knight was protecting the black king from checkmate.

I told my little buddy that I appreciated this idea, but if I actually put it into practice, it would be a waste of a move because the knight would be able to retreat to a square where it could still protect black from checkmate.

But then he said something really, well, sweet, I guess. He said in German, “Let’s just see what happens.” And even though I knew the move he was proposing wasn’t the best, I appreciated his curiosity, so I made it. 

And, well, yeah. The black knight retreated to the exact square I thought it would. Yes, you could have called it a pointless move. But, then again, maybe the move wasn’t such a pointless one for my young friend.

At any rate, with the black knight now settled into its new defensive outpost I tried to find some other attacking moves. I found a few good ones, but I didn’t make any of them without consulting my little friend first.

And together, we forged on. I told him my thoughts on the game, he his.

I tried to find a way to win; I really did. But it was a bit difficult because, even though I wanted to make the moves I wanted, I also didn’t want to discourage this kid by not paying attention to his ideas. And so what wound up happening was I made some of the moves he recommended despite my better judgment.

And, well, because I did this, our initiative started to disappear. The computer stabilized its position and things began to look bad for us. But that was OK, I thought, because by that point, I had to leave the cafe and get to my appointment. 

I told my friend that I had to go and therefore we unfortunately couldn’t finish our game. But he asked me to stay just for a little longer. He wanted to play more. I couldn’t help but find a few more minutes.

Owing to the fact that I knew the game was totally lost at this point, I let him take over completely. I let him make a move that invited a nasty check from the computer. Even though the consequences of making such a move were obvious to me, he was totally dumbfounded. But that’s OK.  

And then, finally, I saw what the computer was setting up for. It moved its bishop to c5, and now had our king directly in its crosshairs. The computer was setting up for the coupe de grâce.

My little friend, though, still didn’t think the game was over. But I told him in German that we were in serious trouble. “Uh oh,” I said,  “Wir haben grosse Probleme. “We have big problems.” I told him to look at the enemy bishop on c5 and how we would be in “discovered check” -- a very bad thing to be in -- once the enemy rook moved away from the square right near our king. The end was clearly close.

But still, my buddy was not discouraged. I pointed to the bishop and I showed him how the enemy had coordinated its pieces to checkmate us.  And then I said, “Guck mal. Wir sind tot. Aber es ist schoen.” “Look, we’re dead. But we’re being killed in a very elegant way.”

Finally, the little fellah saw. “Ahh, ya,” he said. “Schachmatt” – “checkmate.”

And so I moved, and then black moved its rook, just as I had thought, and indeed we were checkmated. 

After looking at the screen for a few seconds, just to see exactly how the deathblow was dealt, the little kid joined his mom or guardian -- I’m not exactly sure who this  woman was -- and I said, “Chess is fun” in German, and he agreed.

I then cleaned up around the area where I was sitting and said goodbye to them both.

It was the coolest little experience.