Fischer vs Spassky

Recently, Punkin, age 5, was looking in the basement for a game to play, and pulled out a long box, asking, "Can you teach me this game?"

It was Chess, a game I played so infrequently as a child that I had to read the instructions (that were fortunately still in the box) so as to properly set up the pieces on the board. I then had to try to explain to him how each piece moved (again, after checking), and what the ultimate goal was.

He did his best to recall what each piece would do, but did require some help during the game. It became evident that he liked getting his pieces captured even if he took one of mine. We played perhaps 5 games over the course of a couple weeks, and each time he did slightly better, even if he still didn't mind losing pieces.

Last week we started to play and Punkin Bread asked to play on my team, so we teamed up against Punkin. Punkin Bread and I alternated moving our pieces; I let her move any piece she wanted as long as the move was legal, even if it meant putting our piece at risk. Her favorite tactic was to take a piece and slam it straight down the line to smash into Punkin's piece. I had to repeatedly tell her that's not quite how the game was played, so she would have to go back and try something else.

After about 20 minutes she decided she had had enough, leaving the two Grand Masters to battle it out against each other.

And what a match it was! We went toe-to-toe for an additional 10 minutes before we were both left with just a King, thus settling for a draw.

If the international press had been there to cover our every move, perhaps we could have played for millions of dollars, just as they did in 1972.