Afshin Nejat

I’ve left off from Chess for a few years now, playing only off and on here and there. Actually I got quite good as a novice of Chinese Chess during that time, but found that I preferred to go back to “International Chess” in order continue my progress toward mastery of my “first love” (mathematics was my second love, followed by logic, then philosophy as such, then religion, then martial arts, then Gnosticism, not in order of importance).

I’m making new progress in Chess, by acquiring a robust library of study materials, computer programs, and a new quad-weighted Fischer competition set and a chess mat, and entering into a local informal chess club.

I’ve actually beaten a player several hundred points above my own rating in a ten minute game, much to his consternation. It was amusing to realize in retrospect that he was expecting to win from the outset. I could tell he was playing “disrespectfully” by making inferior moves which seemed to expect that I would not make the best move in the position, so he didn’t feel any need to seek he best moves until it was too late, and even then those moves would only work if I didn’t continue to make the best moves. I won handily.

I’ve taken a couple of weeks off from going the club in order to continue to focus my own chess training, and to beef up my ability so that when I return I can “woop up” on some rather pathetic egos I encountered there, who simply need to be wooped up upon. I don’t like playing egos unless I’m crushing them. The last time I did this was back in the early to mid 90s after I had read my first chess book, whereupon I went back to the Coney Island where I proceeded to beat thrice in a row a strangely egotistical fellow who had done me the same favor with much self-satisfaction a month earlier. I expect to do the same next month when I go back to the club.

I also want my searing victory to burn in the mind of the erstwhile “higher rated” opponent that I had recently beaten, since I am sure he has been really practicing and fuming as a result of our first and only game where I beat him hands down. I guess letting him spin his gears in frustration will better prepare him for the beating he will receive when I return with much greater power.

I have a job which gives me four days off a week, and so I shall be spending those days doing much more chess training than ever before. I will be “king of the hill” at this local club just as I was in the old days at certain cafes I used to frequent. By the end of this year I expect to be playing at the strength of a rated expert, at USCF ELO of about 2000+.

In a couple more years I’ll naturally progress to full mastery, but I’m not in any hurry for these things, I see them as merely natural inevitabilities based on my current level and what I’m doing to improve.

Many of my collections will “fall off” and be non-collectible soon. In a few more years he rest will also be gone. Not that I seriously think we will have much of a world left, but if I simply wait these exploitative debts out, they will be gone.

Student debt is another matter. I still have a semester left before graduation, and I’ve put that off for over three years now. This year the Treasury took all my tax refund and it probably only paid half this year’s interest on that debt. I have to seriously do something about this every month and perhaps get into college and finish this degree in order to freeze the debt for a while and also get a better job, perhaps overseas as an English Teacher, in order that I can more reasonably pay off such a debt while getting some benefit from having acquired that debt by using the full degree for which it was acquired.

Debt consolidation is something I must look into as well, but first and foremost I must finish my degree, then handle that debt.

I　WILL do this!!