Perhaps it was when I missed my bus stop so I could finish a three-minute game of online blitz chess that I realised I had a problem. Or when, instead of getting off at the next stop, I started another game on chess.com. I certainly had no qualms about the resulting half-hour walk home, narrowly avoiding lamp-posts as I continued to line up ill-fated pre-moves against anonymous opponents.
Blunder. Resign. New game.
I was addicted to online chess.
It was time for a change.
One day, I noticed nine chess books in the window of a local charity shop. I bought them all and deleted both chess apps from my phone. I would focus on learning, not an arbitrary Elo number. Slowly, through learning the Catalan opening theory, the calm and mystique of chess returned.
Like football, chess is a universal language. In Zurich, I played a best of five game against a local on the giant chess boards in Lindenhofplatz, and did the same in Madrid at El Retiro Park.
