Metrix X
Speed Chess
American chess master William Ewart Napier mused that “of chess it has been said that life is not long enough for it, but that is the fault of life, not chess.†The masters of blitzkrieg-quick speed chess who sit outside cafés and restaurants the world over, whipping pieces on and off the painted, crumbling surfaces of stone tables and slapping their palms down on the stopwatches that tick like fierce sentries by their sides, might beg to differ. Life is barely—just barely—fast enough for speed chess. The game is played as if by two people who belong on a jerky filmstrip running twice too quickly over its projector’s wheel.
So then, how zippy must a speed chess master be to light a cigarette in seeming slow-motion while his opponent makes his hasty move? How swift, to fly through his turns like a bolt of lightning and still appear slow, relaxed, and unhurried in the moments that lie between them? Faster than the speed of life.
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