The Slow Move and Forgotten Memories

This morning, sitting alone with a cup of coffee at my usual spot on Pham Ngoc Thach Street, I opened the game between Alexander Grischuk and Levon Aronian from the 2026 Candidates Tournament in Berlin. The game lasted six and a half hours, ending in a draw in a rook versus rook endgame. There was no thunderous applause, no explosive moment. Just two players sitting across from each other, staring at the board, and an auditorium so silent you could hear the ticking of the clock. But in that silence, I saw something very similar to football. There is a group of chess players who always choose safe moves. After 1.d4 d5, they avoid 2.c4 to escape the theory maze of the Slav, Semi-Slav, QGA, and Orthodox Queen's Gambit. They choose the Colle System, Trompowsky Attack, Torre Attack, or London System. These openings are not ambitious, they don't require memorizing hundreds of variations, they don't create games for the ages. But precisely because of that safety, they become the most dangerous weapons. This reminds me of teams in V-League. There are teams that never play attacking football. They don't have lightning-fast counterattacks like Hoang Anh Gia Lai under Kiatisuk, they don't have precise long passes like Becamex Binh Duong under Nguyen Anh Duc. They choose a tight, possession-based game, waiting for the opponent's mistake. Fans often call it pragmatic football. But I wonder: is it precisely that pragmatism that is slowly killing the emotion of this sport? In chess, IM Valeri Lilov, a Bulgarian coach, has dedicated six instructional videos to show how to deal with these safe openings. He doesn't just talk about the Colle System or London System. He also delves into the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, and the Richter-Veresov Opening. That is the work of a teacher: preparing his student to face everything, even the seemingly most boring things. But there is one thing Lilov doesn't mention in his videos. That is the moment a chess player realizes he has spent thirty years playing chess, and he still doesn't understand himself. The safe move is not just a tactical choice. Sometimes, it is a confession. I saw that in Nguyen Anh Duc during the 2026 season. He was 32, scored 10 goals for Becamex Binh Duong, but absolutely never mentioned tactics in interviews. Before every match, he lit an incense stick before his mother's portrait, then stayed silent for exactly nine minutes in the locker room. No one knows what he thought during those nine minutes. Maybe he was remembering the days when he was a boy playing football on a red dirt road in Binh Duong. Maybe he was telling himself he would not miss any more chances. Or maybe he was choosing a safe move. I followed Becamex Binh Duong for three weeks that year. I didn't write about tactics. I wrote about ritual. I wrote about how he placed his shoes in front of the locker room door, always white shoes, always in the first position. I wrote about how he drank water, small sips, slowly, as if counting the remaining time of his career. I wrote about how he looked up at the stands before the match began, searching for a face he knew he would never see again. That article reached 180,000 reads. For a newly founded newsroom, that was a record number. But what I remember most is not the number. It was the email I received from an old reader in Nha Trang. He wrote: "I have watched Anh Duc play since he was a kid. I don't know anything about tactics. But I understand why he chose white shoes. His mother liked white." That was the moment I understood that tactics are only part of the story. The rest are memories that cannot be measured. In chess, openings like the Colle System or London System are often considered boring. But behind every safe move is a story. Maybe fear of failure. Maybe the memory of a game lost because of too much ambition. Maybe the fatigue of a player who has spent too many years studying theory yet still cannot overcome himself. I watched the game between Boris Gelfand and Magnus Carlsen at the 2026 Tal Memorial. Gelfand played White, chose a safe opening, and lost in 42 moves. After the game, he told the press: "I wanted to play a real game. But I couldn't find it." That is the cruel truth of sport. Sometimes, you choose the safe move not because you are afraid. But because you are too tired to search for greatness. But I don't believe in fatigue. At least not entirely. In 2026, at the World Cup in Russia, I followed a group of Icelandic fans in the match against Nigeria in Volgograd. Iceland lost 2-0. They were eliminated. But 15,000 Icelanders in a 44,000-seat stadium still stomped their feet and clapped to the rhythm of the Viking clap for a full seven minutes after the final whistle. I stood there, watching them, and I asked myself: is safety always the enemy of beauty? I don't think so. I think safety is a promise. A promise that you will keep playing, keep fighting, keep living. And sometimes, just continuing is already a victory. IM Valeri Lilov probably doesn't talk about this in his videos. He talks about the Catalan, about the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, about the Richter-Veresov. He talks about tactics. But tactics are only the surface. The surface of an ocean we call sport. And beneath that surface, there are underwater waves of memory, of failure, of moments we will never forget. I still sit at that coffee shop every morning. I still watch old games. I still write about Nguyen Anh Duc, about the incense stick before his mother's portrait, about nine minutes of silence in the locker room. I write about safe moves, about boring openings, about draws no one remembers. But in every sentence, I try to find something. A bit of warmth. A bit of humanity. And I hope that, one day, when readers read my article, they will realize that sport is not just victory and defeat. Sport is the story of people trying, every day, to find meaning in the moves they choose. Even when those moves are safe. Even when those moves bring no glory. Because sometimes, in safety, we find the truth about ourselves.