Patzers and Paretos

[Frozen Smoke]

((>tracert ParkerGreen.Pregame
4 | 71 ms 68 ms 74 ms We're Milling Through The Grinder, Grinding Through The Mill█))

Alton’s house was not inside the gated community.

It was near enough to it - a nice side of town - but distinctly separate from that particular parapeted patch of prime real estate. It was more convenient, for sure, closer to the local town, but the fact that Alton fell outside of those walls was the kind of thing that suggested a myriad of possible causes with equally pernicious evidence.

It was possible that it hadn’t been their choice, maybe they were seen as too nouveau riche for the established families, especially given that by all accounts it was a windfall that had seen them seated in the city. After all, the purpose of the walls wasn’t just for safety, it was to serve as a reminder to those who came inside to behave. It was a psychological mechanism as old as the Palatine hill, and Alton’s family's decision to exclude themselves from that effect was eminently noticeable in its absence, although it was impossible to equate the lack of something with the intent to lack something.

He wondered if that corollary had a name for the brief moment his hand hung in the air, before he rapped his knuckles against the door, his eye only catching the white button halfway through the second knock of three. He paused for a moment before pressing it with an index finger as well and waiting for his entrance to be made.

There was a pause as he heard muffled movement from behind the frosted glass, shifting his stance a little, leaning on one leg as he studied his distorted reflection out of lack of other options.

Maybe he should have done his hair rather than just throwing on a hat? It didn’t go quite right with the dark khaki shirt and black jeans. The Underarmour logo looked a little personal trainer to the casual-professional look he’d tried very diligently to embody. Not that he could change it for now.

He looked over to the side, tapping the side of his thigh in a nervous, unscheduled rhythm as his attention wandered around the deathly still street.

[MurderWeasel]

((Alton Gerow continued from To See And Be Seen))

Alton preferred to think of himself as a passionate person rather than an impatient one, but the line between the two characteristics could be admittedly thin at times. This was especially true when he was legitimately interested in something, or, as in this case, someone. He'd gotten everything in order an hour before, right around the same time he bid his mother goodbye as she set out on an errand run that was supposed to culminate in a date. Alton wasn't overly worried about whether or not she might abandon that part of the excursion and come home early; nothing he had planned would be upsetting to her, and she tended to leave him alone when he had company.

So then, he'd waited. Checked himself in the mirror. Made sure his outfit was right (it was, nice and relaxed, skinny black jeans and white undershirt and pale yellow button-down left unbuttoned). He'd tidied up, just a little, so that the house looked lived-in but also as if an effort had been made. He was a semi-frequent host, but more often than not his hospitality was more centered around his car and excursions through town, or else aimed at a girl he had designs upon, a category into which Parker Green most decidedly did not fit. That was okay, though. This was something far more interesting, riper with potential.

His interest really had been piqued, that day on the fields. There had been so much to unpack, to take in, and Parker had slipped away while Caroline was occupying everyone's attention. That move in itself had been curious, and curiosity was something Alton tended to sate, usually with a few questions to mutual acquaintances. In this instance, it had turned out that Nia knew Parker, and while she had been rather the opposite of forthcoming on the subject, she had slip that there was actually a measure of overlap in interest between the boys. This wasn't particularly surprising, given the breadth of Alton's dabbling, but did provide an opportunity which, in turn, had led to the invitation Alton had extended, and to the present moment.

There came a knock, then the ringing of the doorbell, and Alton made his way to the entry from the den, where everything was laid out. He was feeling calm now that the waiting was over, excitement well in hand. His mom had left more shoes than he really thought necessary scattered around the entry, and his prettying hadn't brought him here, so he quickly kicked a couple pairs of heels under the shoe rack that lay against the wall, lips turning down ever so slightly at the clatter. That lasted only for a moment, though, and then he was back in form, stepping over to the door, clicking the lock undone (he always kept the door locked, even though many of the neighbors didn't; old habits died hard) and pulling it open.

"Welcome," he said, with a smile and a nod. "Come in."

[Frozen Smoke]

Parker dipped his head slightly, a show of deference to his host that was as subconscious as it was practised, a mumbled and formless thanks adding a verbal component to the ritual as he ducked inside.

A moment spent scanning his surroundings awkwardly as he pirouetted on the rug that protected the lush looking, cream carpet of the hallway, trying to figure out the unspoken rules of the house regarding shoes. It was the sort of thing that no-one thought to explain, but everyone would judge you for failing to adhere to. Shoe racks under the stairs, keep your shoes on downstairs, shoes off in the hallway. Thankfully Alton's family was kind enough to provide an indicator, and he scraped his shoes off, levering the black hiking boots he'd worn for the hook off one by one without bothering to untie the laces.

The invitation hadn't come as an immediate surprise - Nia was courteous enough to warn ahead if someone was asking around, like a true friend would - but the motives behind it were puzzling. Not that Alton wasn't the sort to be puzzling in the first place. Demetri told tales of Alton bailing him out when games of Poker had gone catastrophically awry for him, and others confirmed in vagueries, which was a puzzling way to play. He'd assumed that this was for the enjoyment of paying someone idiotic to do idiotic things, which seemed to be within his range, given how little he seemed to value his money. But that didn't quite sync up with wanting to play chess with him with no wager on the table. That meant that on one hand, he had to be wary of getting sharked - being played easy with no stakes and talked up to playing for money - but it also meant he had to look for other goals.

Perhaps Alton was simply doing what seemed to be his default. Letting people try and earn his favour.

If that was the case, he really was scraping the bottom of the barrel. But if it was a choice between him and Caroline, he couldn't blame the option taken. Still, it was a shame for Alton that his favour didn't really carry much weight with it any more. The stretch of time in which that status actually mattered was rapidly depleting, and having some lightly rich friend wasn't likely to be as valued of an asset - statistically - at college. And, well, he had no intentions of going to the same place as Alton anyway.

Still. He was curious, more than anything. Alton had to want something from him. There had to be some plan that he fit into. Some aspect of his reputation that had spilt. Some method to the madness.

And, well, it would be nice to finally win a game of chess in person. Gyu-ri had not been kind in that department, as much as he was glad she wasn't. He placed his shoes in the rack, at the bottom left, noticeably away from where the rest of the shoes were pressed together, as if the crumbled and muddied black rubber and fabric weren't distinct enough by themselves.

"Nice place."

[MurderWeasel]

"It is," Alton said. "I've been very lucky."

It seemed right to acknowledge his situation, as well as how he'd ended up here. This house was a far cry from the cramped one-bedroom Tilles Court apartment he'd spent most of his childhood in, sleeping first in a crib in the corner of his mother's bedroom, then graduating to a futon which was finally pulled out into their sparse common area sometime when he was about eight. He had not been one for hosting then, had instead done anything he could to wrangle invites to friends' houses where there were more than two chairs and the TV wasn't an old CRT model that only played local programming and Goodwill DVDs.

Not that he wanted to dwell on the past. It was what it was, and he didn't begrudge his mother for their former circumstances. She'd done the best she could, and indeed much better than many of the parents of his classmates back in Denton, even those who were still married or had more money. And everything had worked out, in the end. Somehow, for Alton, it always seemed to.

"The den's this way," he continued, giving Parker a nod, then turning and beckoning him on with a left-handed wave of two fingers above his shoulder, not looking back. "Make yourself at home. If you'd like, we can get some refreshments before we get started."

He took a couple steps, expecting Parker to follow reasonably promptly. The entryway connected directly by hall to both the kitchen and the den, the former to the right and the latter to the left. The kitchen was the room in the house least of a piece with its general aesthetics, mostly because it was one of the rooms that saw most frequent use. It had a small dining set of its own, a dented, scratched table with four battered chairs around it, and it was there that Alton and his mom ate most nights and mornings. For entertaining, of course, there was the dining room proper, and his mom did all she could to ensure that any dates she brought home saw only that side of their culinary experience. Alton usually didn't worry about it. In fact, he found that the more casual layout in the kitchen often set others at ease. People liked to know they weren't the only ones with little human foibles and eccentricities.

The den, by contrast, was carefully maintained and crafted to impress. Its shelves were populated by little artsy knickknacks and books, half of the literature comprised of classics both modern and historical, and half large coffee table books perfect for guests to page through idly. To this latter collection, Alton had quietly added "A History Of Cannibalism," a hefty rectangular book with a lurid red cover. To date, no visitor had remarked on it or removed it from the shelf, and if his mother had noticed she had not yet deigned to comment. There was also a couch, a widescreen television with a Blu-ray player that was almost never used, a couple of armchairs, a couple of more practical yet still comfortable chairs, and a coffee table. That coffee table was where Alton had already laid the set out, pieces in position. His mom had actually purchased the chess set as reference for a painting she'd never completed, and it was a nice one, board and pieces carved from wood. Alton had claimed it about two years ago, during his brief foray into the chess club before his interest waned.

"We have snacks," he continued, tone airy, "water, Coke, whiskey..."

[Frozen Smoke]

The 'den', as Alton had designated it, was certainly something. It looked less like a games room and closer to something like a smoking room. The small shelves of books that encircled the room at just below eye level were filled with the kind of inoffensive dreariness that he'd expected to find, a few picture books of sights within 20 minutes drive of where they stood, a few quaint and assuredly rosy re-tellings of local history. A few classics of note were present, but you could tell by the spine they'd been read once, if at all. The sorts of things people mindlessly associated with being refined, or fitting well within a space that was trying as hard as it could to look refined, a familiar visual addition to the cushy leather seating and dimmed, yellow lighting.

It was a piece of work, but Alton's work it most certainly wasn't.

Alton interrupted his brief musing, bringing his eyes quickly back to him after having drifted across the room, drinking in the new location as the stood at the fork between kitchen and den. It was a simple offer, but one he always felt unsure about. Too many times had others assumed wrongly as to what he had, or the other way around, which inevitably lead to the verbal equivalent of failing to pass by one-another on the pavement as apologies went back and forth. Still, it would have been weirder for Alton to not ask at all.

"Coffee, if that's not too much trouble." he asked, trying to keep his tone light, carrying all the lack of weight his thoughts on what drink he wanted held. There was a moments pause, and then he preempted the obvious follow up, speaking just before Alton was able to. "Black, no sugar." He deepened his smile a little and offered a final, deferential "Thanks." to close out the exchange.

That left him on his own for another moment, not wanting to follow Alton into the kitchen as he sorted the two of them out. That would be too needy, too much like he desired Alton's company, or attention. Instead, he chose to observe, tracing his eyes around the room. The chess board was possibly the item other than the chairs that had seen the most use. A few small scuffs in the dark mahogany and light ivory veneer that coated the board, but nothing much more. A tap with the back of a fingernail confirmed that the white pieces were, indeed, made out of wood painted with an ivory coloured coating and not the real deal. Everything else only seemed like it had collected dust since being placed upon the shelves. He toyed with a puzzle box he picked up for a moment, rolling it between one hand and another to feel the weight, sliding aside the first few obvious steps - then putting it back.

He wondered if it had ever been successfully opened.

The item which caught his eye in the moments before his host returned was a little more distinct though, as his fingers gripped the spine curiously and tugged it from where friction and gravity held it, twisting the thick red cover to look at the cover art. It was decidedly less appealing than the understated Papyrus fonted text that read "A History of Cannibalism", marred as it was by the lengthy subtitle "From ancient cultures to survival stories and modern psychopaths", which took his estimation of it's contents from an overarching historical tracing of the phenomenon to a smorgasbord of examples for the gore tourist. A gorist, if he were to coin a term.

He thumbed to the first page with one hand, the back of one hand to keep the springy cover open to the light absent the weight of half the book pressing back against it as his index finger traced down the lines of text, holding his place in the paragraph as the slow, deliberate footsteps of someone carrying drinks with them approached.

"Yours?" he asked, with the tone of someone who was fairly sure what answer he was going to get, not looking up as he continued to read towards the end of the first paragraph. The room might not have been Alton's work per-say, but he'd certainly left a signature or two on it.

[MurderWeasel]

"Mm hm."

Alton wasn't one to beam, but he gave Parker an appreciative smirk. It was always nice to have one's attention to detail pay off, though truth be told he also found something inherently appealing in knowing that there was something ever so slightly out of place that was slipping by unnoticed by everybody else. The presence of the book created a situation he couldn't lose in, which was his favorite sort to engineer. Other people seemed oddly unable or unwilling to set up such circumstances, something which had long puzzled Alton.

Well, most other people.

A few light steps more, and he laid the drinks down on the coffee table, one on each neutral edge of the board, so as not to presume or prejudice a side selection. Not that he expected Parker to be overly swayed by any psychological trickery, and there was something potent about playing with glass placement, a scene from a movie he'd enjoyed as a child, both cups poisoned, but now wasn't the time.

"I'm afraid the contents don't live up to the cover," he added.

The black and white, text-heavy interior was a disappointment for sure, though not enough of one to have turned him off when he found the book, brand new, in a Salvation Army for two dollars. Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son" was not a vividly colorful work to begin with, but that made those tones it did contain all the more important, particularly the crimson rimming the torn edges of the dismembered torso in the titan's mouth. In greyscale, all of its power was lost and it came off as harmless, inert. Alton's mother had a much better Goya collection, one which included all of The Black Paintings as plates, one which Alton had given her for her birthday last year, but she didn't leave that lying around where guests might stumble upon it.

Alton had read that a number of scholars were convinced that The Black Paintings were in fact not the work of Goya, but of a relative or some other impostor. He hoped that was true. Something about the concept, the idea that these fantastically famous works of art could have gained their renown by being fraudulently attributed to a master, tickled his fancy.

Parker's coffee was in a simple white mug, one unstained by the residue of past drinks. Neither Alton nor his mother drank coffee, but they had guests often enough to keep some on hand. He'd picked the last batch, an artisinal blend of some kind from a place called The Mad Priest. He hadn't a clue whether or not it was decent. His own drink was a simple tumbler of grapefruit juice, the florid tone dulled slightly by the yellow light of the room. He was abstaining from alcohol himself, for the moment. It seemed impolite and inadvisable to drink when a guest wasn't.

[Frozen Smoke]

Parker nodded in appreciation of the advice hidden in the statement. That it wasn’t going to be worth his time pondering over it, and that he probably shouldn’t go out of his way to buy it. That, combined with his own observations, unsold him on his curiosity. He pulled his hand out from between the pages, letting the front cover fold itself back over the text, hanging slightly ajar in his hand as he moved to place it back on the shelf where he’d found it.

“Must be funny to see how many people don’t notice it.” he commented, offering him a quick smile. If the book itself didn’t hold much value in his eyes, then something else was the reason he’d placed it here.

He waited for the first hint of a reaction before deepening his smile and looking away as he slid the book back into the place in which it had sat before.

“Did the same thing with Anatomy in Black.” he lied.

The chances that Alton would be in a position to see that he not only lacked a den, but also bookshelves in general upon which to display such a book, were slim. The chance that he would remember even if he did was slimmer still. But the book had served its real purpose now, allowing the two of them to bond over shared miscreancy, as he moved to stand across the table on which the board rested.

He reached over the table, twisting the coffee cup a little before picking it up by the handle and lifting it over the arrayed pieces, placing it down on his own neutral side of the board.

It was a nice set. Traditional. All the pieces cut in a fashion that would be as recognisable to someone in the 1700’s as today, without any of the added grandiose flourishes, or modernistic minimalism that he saw a lot of. It was simple without revelling in its simplicity. Functional.

“Any side preference?” he queried.

[MurderWeasel]

"No preference," Alton said. He shrugged, slightly, like it wasn't even a lack of preference important enough to merit a full shrug.

His statement wasn't exactly true, of course, but he was the host and more than that he was intrigued by how and whether Parker would make a decision. That curiosity overrode his own loose preference, particularly because of the underpinnings of his feelings.

All else being equal, his opponent truly pressing him to choose, Alton would pick the black side almost every time. It had nothing to do with gameplay; he didn't have any real attachment to a more reactive style and wasn't advanced enough in the game's theory to fully comprehend the strategic ramifications. What spoke to him about black was a combination of associations and aesthetics. In chess, white was the default choice, the first to move, the protagonist. Most people would pick white if given the choice, in Alton's experience, and that made it less interesting. There was no complexity to it, no thought. It was the same reason he'd call every coin toss as tails, and tended to, all else being equal, favor the left-hand path at a crossroads.

There was, of course, a measure of predictability in choosing the least-favored option. That too could lead to stagnation and routine, and so sometimes he'd challenge himself on those fronts. Doing so never felt quite right or comfortable, though. Pretend mundanity was still too close to the real thing, particularly when engaged in without a clear and more uncommon end goal.

While Alton didn't say it, he had this vague idea that Parker might also favor the black side. There were these little moments of familiarity. The boy seemed to want a measure of control of the situation. The little movement of the mug stood out to Alton, though he said nothing about it and barely gave it a glance; Parker was claiming the drink as his own and repositioning it for no real reason, but in so doing he put it in a place of his choosing, rather than Alton's.

And of course, there was Anatomy in Black, which Alton had never heard of, but that didn't require mention just now. He'd look it up later, and figure out whether it was worth exploring beyond its own cover.

[Frozen Smoke]

Parker nodded in deference to that statement, his hand remaining by the cup of coffee, thumb gently rotating it around as he thought. The white porcelain slid on top of the polished wood with little enough friction that the motion remained unconscious for a while, only noticing as he replied, declining to mention it or the pause. It must have been about 5 seconds, but as long as he didn't mention it, they'd be able to move past it.

"I'll take white then."

It had been an interesting question. Gyu-ri and he switched sides often enough that there wasn't the opportunity to develop a particular side affinity, but the choice presented a dichotomy of approach to the game, and how he wished to introduce himself - so to speak - in the game.

He liked to think of Chess as a game of questions and answers. The general tempo of the game, due to the simple nature of who played first, meant that White held the initiative. As such, it was White's job to ask Black difficult questions to answer, and it was Black's job to find answers to White's questions which pre-empted future questions, until tempo could be regained. This meant that White had a wider gradient of 'correct' answers, whereas black had the informational advantage that allowed that side to make more definitive quantification of which moves were right or not right, especially in the early development phases of the game. However, White undeniably had an advantage in a perfectly even skill match-up, although it was merely weakly-dominant.

As such, the real question being asked was between if he wanted to sacrifice ease of play for an overall competitive advantage, and he chose accordingly. He was assuming that he was a better player than Alton, and in that case he would increase his advantage by giving himself more pressure with which to leverage Alton with. He chose accordingly, and sat down in the chair closest to that side.

He took a moment to study the board once more before making his move. It wasn't something he had to think overly long about, as he'd had time to consider this on the walk to Alton's house, even though he hadn't intended to plan, he'd found himself contemplating what Alton had experience against as a player. He'd played mostly against the Chess Club, although he likely had a relative who played given that he both did and owned a chess set, which added a few unknowns to the equations. With that noted though, he expected that Alton was mostly familiar with openings revolving around e4 variations, as they were the most commonly taught and widely considered 'optimal', which centralised the metagame around that and it's counters like the Kings Indian.

Parker decided that the best option was to stray from that style as heavily as he could.

A hand reached out from his lap and picked out the piece, moving it to the desired spot on the board.



His hand disappeared beneath the table once again as he looked over the table to his counterpart and smiled at him warmly.

"Thanks for inviting me, it's a lot more fun to play in person than online."

[MurderWeasel]

"I quite agree. Thanks for taking me up on it."

Alton returned the smile, as he reached out and moved the pawn in front of his king forward one space.



It was a favorite when he was stumped, because it offered misleading vulnerability while also unlocking powerful pieces. Was it optimal? Probably not. It was hard to say. He'd always struggled, just a little, with the opening moves of the game. They were the setup, the quiet moments before the storm that dictated how the actual action of the game played out, but endless possibility could almost be too much. It was easier to work around a known set of expectations and possibilities, even if what he was doing was then subverting them.

Parker seemed to like a little subversion too. Alton knew that knight-based first moves weren't unheard of, but they left the initial line unbroken. He viewed them, perhaps incorrectly, as noncommittal. He wasn't totally sure of his opponent's game yet, especially as the boy advanced the pawn in front of his queen two spaces.



It was aggressive, bold yet backed with force, perhaps making a statement.

Okay.

Alton picked up his grapefruit juice and took a little sip, rolling the bitterness over his tongue. He contemplated the board, but only briefly. Then he slid his kingside bishop diagonally four squares.



"Check."

He smile didn't change.

[Frozen Smoke]

Parker's eyes widened, and his posture shifted a little, adjusting himself further back in the seat but slouching forwards - Pressing his elbow to the table as he held his arm up, gently tapping the flesh of his thumb against his teeth as his eyes scanned the table. It was something he knew didn't really help him think, but somehow he felt like biting things helped him think, and this was a slightly more socially acceptable looking version of that.

After a moment, he took his thumb out of his mouth to utter a quick, courteous "Okay." to acknowledge the game state, before returning to his contemplation.

He was trying to see where the trap was. The move itself wasn't the most threatening, his board wasn't developed enough to really take advantage of the position he'd taken, and he'd be able to force him to make a defensive move to save his piece whilst developing his own board.

But taking things that simply was how you lost. Underestimating your opponent was always a negative EV move. So, what were the downsides of responding to it?

He tried to play out a few moves along in his head, trying to think about what Alton might do, and he saw something akin to a pattern there. C2-C3 would lock him in to playing for the centre, with an E2-E4 move to follow up, and leaving B1-D2 open in order to present a threat onto E4 whilst developing out the rest of his pieces.

It seemed Alton wanted to sacrifice his centre for his flanks.

Sure, he'd take that trade.



Parker watched Alton as he contemplated his response. There was no reason to look at the board when it wasn't your turn to play, if you could keep the board state roughly in your head, as you would have all the time to make choices regarding the moves they actually made on your turn. Parker had tried to make it a habit versus Gyu-ri, although it had yet to prove enough to make the difference when playing her, in order to try and glean what moves she might be thinking about - Patterns of play she could be tracing out.

He had to say he was impressed by the gamesmanship Alton was showing by pretending to even contemplate what piece to move before he made the forced retreat.



Parker made a point to not pause between the moves as his hand reached down and continued along the plan. Some people felt pressured into playing fast and not thinking their moves through if you reacted to them fast, out of some sense of fair play. Perhaps Alton would be susceptible to that.



"Interesting opening." he noted, offering him a smile that he hoped seemed interested and not mocking, as he sat behind the foundations of an attack.

[MurderWeasel]

"I do my best," Alton said, his smile small but unforced. He wasn't sure whether Parker intended his comment as compliment, disparagement, or simple statement of fact. The truth was, though, he was interested in the connotations only insofar as they provided information about his opponent's character; when it came to Alton's own personal metrics, "interesting" was praise.

One of the things that interested him most thoroughly about chess was that it was a game with a fairly simple set of rules and a theoretically finite amount of decent moves form any position, and yet the number of pieces and intricacies of personal style and little errors in judgement created an environment in which it was fairly rare for an exact game to be replicated by chance. The actual overall product of any meeting could go any one of a nigh-infinite number of ways, even with similar openings. It was thrilling, in a way, to think that the game they were playing right now was quite possibly to be a combination never before explored.

Alton had been angling towards his kingside knight for a little, and now lifted it and placed it alongside his sole advanced pawn, threatening the piece Parker had just moved.



That seemed to be another interesting move. Parker's response was slow, slower than his previous actions. His hand hovered over the pawn, then pulled away. Chess etiquette was that a piece, once touched, would be moved; contact meant commitment. Alton was not overly bothered about that convention, and would not have denied any request Parker made to be released from such an obligation, but neither would he ever expect such a request from the boy. Certainly, he wouldn't make one himself.

After a brief further span of contemplation, though, Parker's hand returned to the pawn, and he advanced it forward one square further.



This, of course, presented a choice: Alton could move either knight or bishop to safety, thus sacrificing the other, or else do something totally unrelated and leave the decision to Parker. That was his initial instinct; it would be a further reaction test and allow for development elsewhere on the board. But ultimately, he did want Parker to think he was taking this seriously; he'd extended the invitation and while a certain measure of statement-making was all in good fun, he hadn't asked the boy here to waste his time. So he took a moment longer, let his focus rest solely on the board, tracing paths and possibilities. Forcing the decision by capturing the pawn himself with the bishop briefly crossed his mind but was summarily discarded. He'd already played one brazen maneuver for the sake of impact.

Finally, he moved his bishop back one square towards his own side.



He'd never quite liked knights as well; their movement was fascinating but restrictive, and something about the animalistic nature of their design just did not appeal.

[Frozen Smoke]

From here, the sequence of motions was almost pre-determined, as a pair of hands worked in tandem to correct the board to an un-entangled game state.

Pawn takes knight.



Bishop takes pawn.



Neither of them stopped to give an illusion of considering non-existent choices, and he chose not to comment on the fork. As much as he was happy with the play, it had more impact if he let it go uncommented upon, as if it was the sort of thing he considered mundane enough to not remark on it. The board now lay open too. He now had a materiel advantage, but the positional advantage he'd been fighting for had been the cost of that, and he needed to regain it if he wanted to keep the pressure up.

He stared at the board, looking over at Alton's pieces and ignoring his own as he tried to imagine what moves he might make, how he would try and capitalise on this weakness. Predicting Black's answers and trying to ask them a trick question.

"Do you get the chance to play often?" he asked idly, his eyes not leaving the board.

The conversation felt like it was sticking, a little. Too formal. Too dry.

He'd deal with that when he had time to think.

A bishop was raised up, and then down, and he made eye contact with Alton for a brief moment before his opponent's attention returned to the board.

[MurderWeasel]

"Not as often as I'd like."

Alton spent a little longer than he had been mulling his next move. It was a pause in the tempo, a brief moment of respite and reset, but that brought with it its own challenges. It was in many ways a return to the status quo of the game's start, only now with a slight reduction in the number of factors to play around. This was more than just the two captured pieces. There were threats, now, moves that would be obviously poor or costly, but it was to Alton to decide where and whether to begin the next thrust.

His attention centered on the pawns on his flanks. He had managed, thus far, to keep his line very close to its starting state. It wasn't a particularly conscious tactical decision, more a consequence of putting himself on the defensive with his bishop and allowing Parker to dictate the momentum, and so he felt no apprehension when he decided on one of the two options that had stood out to him the most, on opposite flanks. He edged the pawn in front of his kingside rook forward one space.



Parker's reaction to this was actually something Alton had loosely considered doing himself.



Castling was one of those quirky maneuvers that rank novices tended to forget was even allowed, second only to en passant. It was the only opportunity to move two pieces in one turn, which made it potentially powerful, and it also served both to bring the rook into a more central, easily deployable position and to slip the king further from harm. In this particular instance, however, it did little to affect the state of the board in the short term.

Patience was, of course, a virtue. There was no need to wrestle tempo towards yourself at every moment; sometimes it was best to wait and see what your opponent had to offer. Alton was more than content to continue to take the active role and to display his wares, even though they were less decisive than they might have been. He jumped the next pawn over a double step forward.



Position thus solidified, he let his focus now return to Parker, waiting for the boy's next move.

[Frozen Smoke]

Parker nodded, appreciating the sentiment behind the statement. It was, after all, a different experience to play someone face to face. There was more nuance to it than the pure application of mental acuity to the system, when done in person. But it came with its own sets of challenges, the necessity of paying full attention to the task at hand, not to mention the lead time that came with trying to play a game out physically. Getting to Alton's house had taken half an hour, as opposed to the matching delay of milliseconds that Lichess held, ignoring however long the necessary niceties had taken.

He decided to concentrate on the board, rather than answer again in the moment. Alton was being unusually terse, and that probably meant he wished to focus on it himself, which he would allow. He didn't particularly need to take any undue advantages, given that he was in the lead for now. The knight that he had taken was still in his right hand for the moment, his thumb idly rubbing across the flat side of the piece, almost as if it was a personal totem.

The next move was interstitial. An adjustment of his rook's positioning to bring Alton's king under a little threat, with only a pawn standing between him and check.



Alton responded in kind, setting himself up for a Queenside Fianchetto that would allow his bishop to control the long diagonal of the board, maximising it's impact.



This left the momentum squarely at his feet. He had to present something that Alton would need to deal with, rather than following through with his own plan - Or that would at least punish him for doing so. It took a few moments before, with a confident smile, he moved his knight with his left hand.



Alton had been nothing but aggressive so far. It wasn't unthinkable that he'd take this sacrifice without thinking about the implications of what it would leave him with. He placed the knight he'd otherwise been holding back down on the table neatly, and gestured loosely to indicate that it was his move.