You know the skiing is bad when the communal blog shows up

Bennett rocked my shit tonight as black after I achieved everything I ever dreamt of as white. We order our dumplings and prepare to go to battle in the blood stained colosseum of Pelmenis Anchorage.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. d4 exd4

And the mood inside Pelmenis lifts. The Rio Gambit has taken another victim. I hurriedly tear into my third order of potato dumplings, knowing that the hard part of the chess game is already over. Bennett is likely around the high triple digits ELO range if he were to play more rapid games on chess.com, and I have basically won a piece over him in 5 moves out of the opening. We continue…

6. Re1 f5 7. Nxd4 Bc5

Huh thats a strange move. Whatever

8. Nxc6 Qh4

Oh shit wtf is this. Do I sack the exchange? Then he has to take with queen and Im out of the checkmate threat

9. Rxe4+ fxe4

Oh no Im a brick

10. Be3 dxc6 11. Ba4 Bd6 12. h3 Rf8 13. Nc3 Bxh3 14. Qd4 Bxg2 15. Kxg2 Qh2+ 16. Kf1 b5

Holy shit I think if he found Bg3 here I am totally dead in the water.

17. Qxe4+ …. White wins by checkmate after several more moves.

Somehow I survive past here, but holy cow. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing red because of the infuriating opening, the hue of the walls of Pelmenis, or the beautiful red locks of hair across the table from me. I don’t know why the man above gives me the hardest road, but there’s nothing the man above puts you in situations that you can’t handle. And I just kept the same, positive attitude. Instead of saying ‘why me?’, I was saying ‘this is what he wanted me to do.’