As we want to make the early exchanges on Lichess, when Lichess website was still very young, availabe to the publick, we start here with a poem by Henry Reed, who had played with T.S. Eliot in the delta version, and as he had lost the game, wrote:
As we slowly get better, we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I reached Nineteenhundred;
And this time last year I had Eighteenhundred,
And this time next year I shall be Eighteenhundred again.
If I cannot get more training.
To see my time over again — if you can call it time:
Fidgeting uneasily under a draughty board,
Or counting sleepless nights in the crowded Lichess.
There are certain precautions — though none of them very reliable.
Against the blast from the Blitz and the Fisher Random,
But not against the blast from the Bullet, vento dei venti,
The storm within a gambit unable to accept;
And the frigid burnings of the Steinitz will not be touched
By any emollient.
I think you will find this put,
Better than I could ever hope to express it,
In the words of Ruy Lopez: "It is, we believe,
Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump
Will extinguish Mate."
Oh, players,
And you especially who have turned on the TCP/IP,
And sit fronting the dread monitor or stroke the smarted fone,
(Which is also the forewarn of hell) pray not for your selves but your souls.
And pray for me also under the draughty defence.
As we get older we do not get any younger.
And pray for Elo under the holy Fide,
That neither Old Possum
Nor Rum Tum Tugger might get you
And the Rumpelteazer's stalemate.
As we slowly get better, we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I reached Nineteenhundred;
And this time last year I had Eighteenhundred,
And this time next year I shall be Eighteenhundred again.
If I cannot get more training.
To see my time over again — if you can call it time:
Fidgeting uneasily under a draughty board,
Or counting sleepless nights in the crowded Lichess.
There are certain precautions — though none of them very reliable.
Against the blast from the Blitz and the Fisher Random,
But not against the blast from the Bullet, vento dei venti,
The storm within a gambit unable to accept;
And the frigid burnings of the Steinitz will not be touched
By any emollient.
I think you will find this put,
Better than I could ever hope to express it,
In the words of Ruy Lopez: "It is, we believe,
Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump
Will extinguish Mate."
Oh, players,
And you especially who have turned on the TCP/IP,
And sit fronting the dread monitor or stroke the smarted fone,
(Which is also the forewarn of hell) pray not for your selves but your souls.
And pray for me also under the draughty defence.
As we get older we do not get any younger.
And pray for Elo under the holy Fide,
That neither Old Possum
Nor Rum Tum Tugger might get you
And the Rumpelteazer's stalemate.