So, the craze is here, as Speed Freaks moves from the weekends to every day, every time I enter the #fumbblminors channel, I'm bombarded with requests to join, or when I ask "What's SMACKing?", almost laughed out of town because I'm not on the fashionable SFC bandwagon. Thought I'd add a blog as to why.

When I was a kid, I played Chess. From the age of 4 when my father taught me how to play, I became fascinated with the purity of the game. There was no luck involved, no advantages to either team, no dice rolls, it was simply about two people engaging in a mental joust. I got pretty good, and as I got older, I was playing on the first or second board for my county in national county championships, and holding my own against the respective no.1s or no.2s from far and wide. When I hit 15, I fell out of love with the game. Part of this was that I was becoming a young man, girls, work, Rugby and other things were getting in the way, but another part to it was the fact that to progress as a player and enter the adult tournamnets and do well, I'd have to do research. At high levels (I must point out here that I'm talking club players. I wasn't a child prodigy by any means, not some natural wonderkid, not an international player, just a pretty good local guy) people were familiar with 'openings', or set patterns of play to start the game with that both sides got involved with to kick things off. To do well, you were basically having to research openings that had been used hundreds of times before, and following a set pattern of 15 or so moves without so much as thinking about it. If the other guy was playing a set opening that you didn't know, deviation from the path generally landed you in a tactical hole as his research, not his brain, capitalised. This seemed at odds with the game I enjoyed. It wasn't pure any more, I was playing guys that were following a book they'd read for 15 moves, it wasn't them out thinking me, it was hundreds of years of scholars condensed in a how-to quickie guide that I hadn't read.

To attain a higher level, I would have to become one of them, so I basically quit competitions.

Nowhere was this practice of playing set openings more apparent than in speed Chess. When you have two minutes to complete an entire game, it's very easy to lean on these set openings, so you don't have to really engage your brain until the middle or endgame, the purity of the game is almost halved. Plus - I'm supposed to be out thinking the other guy. That's the whole point, not top be undone by not spotting a weakness in 10 seconds or less.

Now to BB. BB isn't just about out thinking the other guy. I can cleverly position guards and force a 2db at the ball, only to roll skulls and lose my tactical advantage. BB doesn't have exactly even teams every game. For that purity you lose, you gain team building, this community, fun fluffy teams, different playstyles, many things that make up for this loss. It's a great game. However, it's a game that you can lose for many more reasons than being out thought by the other guy. A crucial double skulls here, a stun on a foul when the other guy got a RIP there, we've all been there, and these little elements of luck add up over a game to have a massive say on the outcome.

Add speed into that, one minute turns. Off goes the brain. It descends into firing off as many obvious 2dbs as humanly possible, and speed of mouse hand. You must lost a degree of out playing your opponent simply trying to move your entire team. When I play BB, I'm not a slow coach, but I do like to create a game plan and exploit a weakness if I can spot one. That takes more than a minute. I like to think that myself and my opponent have given our maximum skill to a game, and if Nuffle chooses to get involved, then fine, but at least we gave it our best shot. You can't ever convince me that will be so in a SFC, it's a speed play-by-numbers format. In a division ([R]) where we are supposed to care about winning, to be super competitive, to be one with the CR system (clearly we aren't, but that's besides the point), I can't help feeling the format is a bit out of place.

I'm not having a go at the tournament. It got moved to weekdays as well as weekends because it was super-popular, so it's an astute adminning decision. Also, I've had people queuing up to tell me how fun it is. You guys, go ahead and enjoy your SFC's, really, I hope we get to the million, and that you get maximum fun out of them. They just aren't for me. When I next ask "what's SMACKing?", all I ask is that you gimmie a break. OK? :P