A Chess Dream
Sometimes I remember my dreams, sometimes not, but as far as I can tell they're rarely about chess. This morning was an exception, as I had a long and vivid dream, the centerpiece of which was my defeating Viswanathan Anand in an unofficial rapid game. (Might as well dream big!) I had recorded the game, people had witnessed it, taken pictures, and near the end even made a cake with the final position. Anand was very good-natured about it and everything was wonderful...
And then I woke up. My immediate reaction, while my eyes were still closed and my head still on the pillow: "Oh no! It wasn't real!!" I have to say that the frustration was more amusement than anything else, a bit like almost catching a giant fish or successfully hitting a hole-in-one and not having anyone around to see it. In fact there was so much glee from the dream itself that it kept me in a good mood for quite a while after that.
Funny enough, I was able to remember much of the game's score, and almost immediately set about reconstructing it. After 2-3 minutes, I realized that what I was remembering may or may not have been my game with "Anand", but bore an overwhelming resemblance to a blitz game I had played the night before. That was "also" a game I won, against a good opponent, but not quite against the world champion. It's a little odd that I remembered that game and that it might have reappeared in my dream, as I hadn't played it right before bed and while it was a decent game it wasn't really anything special.
Readers, do you have any good chess dreams to relate? The late, great David Bronstein sometimes invented entertaining games in his sleep - does he have any rivals among you?