22 years and 30 moves later......

[mangosteen]

Twenty-two years ago, I played my first game of chess.
Two days ago, I finally won.

Admittedly, it was against a computer that I dumbed down to only think 1-2 moves ahead, but considering that that appears to be my current level, I'll take it for what it is; an earned victory.

My relationship to the Royal Game has all of the elements of a love-hate relationship. The attraction, the flirtation, the frustration, the repulsion, lather, rinse, repeat. I'm fascinated by the game, but yet I could never win a game. Humans usually took too much glee in kicking my ass to actually teach my anything (even when asked to teach), and computers merely handed me a glee-free ass-kicking, mostly because I'd set the rating too high.

Quoth a (de)motivational poster: A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits. However, to never win and never quit makes you a moron.

I never won. So I quit. The frustration would fade a couple of years later, and I'd try again. etc. etc. etc.

I guess the thing that amazes me the most about winning is that I now know that my brain can actually think "that way", for certain values of "that way".

Happiness has been hard to come by for the past several weeks, but this helped a lot.

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

I have never been very good at chess either, though I'll play a game now and then (my brother, on the other hand, is pretty good). Well, more like then, since the last game I actually remember playing was when I was in Israel, about a decade ago, against an 11-yr-old kid. He was upset when he lost, and I asked him to think of it from my point of view: I won a game against someone less than half my age, which brings me very little actual glory, or I lost a game to someone half my age, which could be horribly embarrassing...

So anyway. I'm not a super chess player... would you like to play a game sometime?

I bloody well reek at chess

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I could never wrap my head around chess. I'll play and play but I can never see all those "moves into the future" that everyone says are necessary. I was smart enough to get a degree in philosophy, but I can't figure out chess.

What am I supposed to be seeing? I wonder. Am I supposed to be thinking about territory, protection, offense, defense? Perhaps it never helped that many of the people I know that are good at chess strike my as assholes, so I suspect the "ruthless" personality must help the game.

In fact, the feeling of anxiety and frustration I get about chess is the same feeling I got when I took the logic puzzles on the GRE. Each time I bombed those questions miserably -- I can't think fast enough to figure out where the quince tree should go if there's a maple in the first row or whether Dick and sit next to Earl and not get molested. 640 verbal, 750 math, but 550 "reasoning". I suspect the government came up with that section.

I don't think it's fair to test on these topics without some kind of preparation. I can't even see why I blow it -- I can think spatially, I aced trig, I even enjoy logic puzzles of other sorts. So why can't I figure out whether the linden tree belongs?

I probably spend too long thinking about the best answer instead of eliminating bad ones. Maybe it's the same with my chess playing.

I decided during the past year that I want to get some kind of degree in computer science. Tufts has a "post-bac minor" in comp sci that gives you the equivalent to apply for graduate studies -- sort of a GED for people with humanities degrees. There are similar programs for pre-law and pre-med catch-up. want to study algorithms formally. I want to know the being within the bubble-sort and the titrations of search engines. Maybe I just want some more stuff in my mental bag of tricks.

-stale mate, Dante

Re: I bloody well reek at chess

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I aced the logic section of the GRE, but I hate chess and am not very good at it. Bridge, now, bridge I love.

P.S. Yes, the secret to those logic puzzles is to eliminate the wrong answers until you're left with the right one.

go, go!

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

Now you need to join the throngs of people (well, not me, but...) who can give P a game of Go.