“Pawn to e4.”
“Okay, pawn to e5.”
Silence. That had been the easy part.
Playing chess by mail was ideal for him because he liked everything about mail except actually writing the letters. Receiving them — getting something in the postbox, slitting open the envelope — that was fun. Sealing up a new letter, selecting a stamp, writing the address and dropping it off, that was fun too. Playing chess by mail meant that he was expected to write nothing more than his move. Anything else was purely a bonus. It took all the pressure off.
But it took him surprisingly long to realize that he didn’t actually enjoy chess for its own sake. It wasn’t until he got a letter from what he thought was a new opponent and read the following:
- p-e4 p-e5
It has been your move for eight years.
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