My favourite piece #chess

I never work on the 8th November. No tax, no clients, no Deloitte. Of course, that is not entirely true- I act for two national retailers whose shops are on every high street; and I listen to the business news, so can't help think of tax…but 8th November was the day my mother died, now eleven years ago, and I swore to myself I would never work on that day, day, and just do nice things. There are 364 other days in the year.

Today has started really well. Some weeks ago I was asked by one of the teachers at my children's former primary schools if I would come to speak to their assembly, as one of their series of outside 'inspirational' speakers, and I was glad to accept: if a bit frightened of speaking in front of c 300 children, never having done so before. But it went really well, and I feel exhilarated having done it.

I got a lot of good questions- so many, in fact, that the head/the organising teacher extended the assembly so that sufficient children could ask what was on their mind- though there were so many hands up, that some had to be disappointed.

One question was:

What's your favourite piece?

My answer was easy: it is the knight, 'the piece that moves in a funny way'. It has always been my favourite.

In my previous post, I listed my shortest victories. Whilst I was working on the Chessbase file sorting them in shortest first order, I also looked at my longest game, and it was my game at the Chorley Open in August 1975 with Stewart Fishburne, a game I remember well, for the difficulty of the struggle, and the joy of my last move, Nh8.

Position after 71...Nh8

There is a saying 'chess is the game of one tempo'; and another, 'chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy'. That was certainly true for me in the above game.

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