Good Loser

Chess was not my forte at school, but as other kids were getting wooed by the mysterious power of Sinclair ZX Spectrum and kicking back on Pac-Man, the old game still intrigued me. As a teenager, I was not impressed with Trivial Pursuit, and to this day, chess is the only board game that doesn't bore me. Now an adult, and a Dad, I am very happy that my 7 year-old boy seems to have taken to it pretty quickly - once I'd tricked him away from his Nintendo 3DS. So fast so, I had to promptly stop being so courteous. Now I have to do my best to defend the crown. He's extremely proud to out-manoeuvre me. But his attention span does wane if the game drags on, so we play at a quite care-free, suicide mission pace. It's not unusual that he throws me on my back, Taekwando style, after just a few minutes. Yesterday, unusually, the battle continued valiantly to the last few faithful pieces. And unbelievably to both of us, I managed to put him in check-mate with my last Pawns - or Shrimps as he calls them. He's not a good looser. But that's something I can teach him, I'm a very experienced loser. BP