1) Pod rediscovers chess. 2) Pod rediscovers that she sucks at chess.

Cafe Society
1

I’ve avoided chess for a long time because I thought I hated it and sucked at it.

However, while I was avoiding it, I was playing other games of abstract strategy, and, unbeknownst to me, I was (I think) developing the skills necessary to appreciate chess. For example, I like Pikemen and Thud. They were unchesslike enough not to turn me off at the beginning, but yet they both require the player to think N moves ahead (where, in my case, N is a smaller integer that it probably should be. :slight_smile: )

We recently scored a used Shogi board for an indecently low price. We didn’t know what it was when we got it; I could only surmise that since the box was printed entirely in Japanese that it was some kind of game from Asia, and since the instructions only showed how to open and close the game board, it must be a classic game that everybody in Japan knows the rules to. With a little web searching I was able to identify it, and by a stroke of luck, the game wasn’t missing any pieces.

I discovered, with some disappointment, that Shogi is really a lot like chess. Many of the pieces move like the various chess pieces. Like chess, the goal is to checkmate your opponent’s king (jeweled general.) (The most significant difference is that when you’ve captured a piece, you can then drop it onto the board and use it as your own piece, which is pretty cool!) Nonetheless, I realized as we were playing that I was actually enjoying myself, and, moreover, what I was enjoying was the same sort of strategic thinking that must be useful in chess.

So, here I am. I’ve played a couple games of chess with the hubby, who is slightly better than me, but not much. I’ve also lost a lot of games against the computer, with the computer player on the weakest setting. sigh How can I learn not to suck at chess? Or, as a thirty-year-old person who plays (and has a reputation for being quite good at) a lot of non-chess games, should I just acknowledge that I don’t have the knack or the talent or the strategic mindset or whatever is necessary? I assume I should read some books; what are some good ones for someone in my situation? I imagine that playing against the computer isn’t nearly as instructive is playing against a human—but is playing against the computer detrimental to my skills? I suppose what I really should do is find some good players, but I’m intimidated, on account of my sucking.

This might be blasphemy, but one of the reasons I like Shogi is that it’s more elegant and doesn’t have dumb, kludgy rules. Castling? Capturing en passant? As an experienced gamer, I’m thinkin’, gimme a break! If I made the mistake of buying a modern game with rules like that, I’d drop it like a hot rock. Yet chess sticks around. Is it because people don’t have a clue about good game design? I think not . . .

Any suggestions or reflections?

2

If it makes you feel any better, I was on my high school’s chess team (and even lettered) but I suck at the game as well. I’d say I’m passable but not particularly good.

En pessante still makes no sense to me.

3

Podkayne, it’s no big deal. You and I ever faced off in a tournament, you’re looking at the lady who would lose very, very badly.

IANCecil, but I think chess originated as a war strategy game, and it’s stuck around because it requires quick strategic thinking–it’s a very intellectual game, it’s a challenge.

Learning not to suck at chess takes lots of practice (many games) and a bit of learning from the pros, just like any other sport.

I, too, have no idea what en pessante means.

4

“In passing.” If you have advanced a pawn three spaces, then your opponent advances his pawn for the first time for two spaces, this would serve to keep you from taking your opponent’s pawn. Instead, if he does this, on the very next move, you can take the pawn en passant by moving to where the capture would be if your opponent had only moved forward one square.

5

Seriously, I doubt it. I should clarify: when I say that I have lost a lot of games against the computer, I mean all of them. I have, in fact, never beat any computer chess game, in all the times over the years that I’ve thought, hey, I should maybe give chess another try.

I hope that losing every single game as a beginner is typical. Otherwise, I’m lamer than I thought.

6

En passant and castling are both the result of correcting poor design.

IINM, there was a time that pawns could only move one space. However, typical games started with me moving a pawn 1 rank, you move a pawn one rank, I move the same pawn ahead again another rank.

Eventually to save time, someone said, “On their first move, let’s allow pawns to move forward 2 spaces.”

“Great,” they all said, “but we can’t allow a pawn just to move right past a pawn on the 5th rank, eluding capture.” (this wouldn’t have happened in the one-move system)

“Good point. If a pawn shoots past a pawn on the 5th rank, we’ll allow that pawn to take him on his next move.”

Voila, en passant.

Similarly, there was a time when “castling” was done through a sequence of stepping the king up, moving the rook over, then slipping the king back in. Even when they didn’t have castling, they still had the notion of “king safety”, i.e. not leaving him in the middle.

Anyway, Podkayne. Except for grandmasters, everyone sucks at chess relative to someone else.

It also takes a lot of work and a lot of practice.

Playing a computer is not bad for you.

You might try some software like “Chessmaster”. I believe that “Chessmaster 10000” is available and that means that “Chessmaster 9000” can be had for a song. Check out ubisoft.com or wherever you get software.

Chessmaster 9000 has enough training tools from rank beginner to expert play to keep you busy for years.

7

Forget playing against the computer. Play against carbon-based lifeforms.

Yahoo has a good, free chess server: http://games.yahoo.com/ . Opponents are available 24-7.

I’ve been playing chess for about 10 years now, and I’m still just a Class C player (1400-1500 rating avg.).

It’s a humbling game, but it’s oh-so fun!

8

Some chess software doesn’t necessarily play well, but it doesn’t make blunders and you do. If that’s all you’ve played (like some freeware) then you’ll always lose until you get better somehow.

If you play “chessmaster 9000” there are “personalities” that will make blunders against you.

You can also put on “blunder alert” so that if you make a move that “hangs a piece” (that’s chess talk for just letting the opponent capture a piece freely) it will alert you.

You can also turn on a window called “mentor lines” where it will show you what your best options are.

9

I second the notion of buying a game with a strong tutorial element. I learned more playing through an hour of the ‘adventure’ mode of Majestic Chess then I ever learned just playing random computer games and people.

From what I understand (and Trunk mentions) Chessmaster 9000 is supposed to be the best that’s out there.

10
  1. loach discovers Pod is a she :smack:

Probably saw it before but it didn’t register

11

I am not a chess player. I don’t do strategic thinking very well. (This may not have anything to do with why I am not a chess player) Anyway, I think there is some merit to the suggestion that chess is highly regarded as a logic game etc. is because it is popular and highly regarded and traditional. (A significant dose of circularity, in other words). Also, perhaps because it is traditional, popular and highly regarded, they have figured out ways to rank people on a scale that somehow ranges from novice to “best player in the world”. Therefore I think that you are entitled to tell people that you could play chess if you wanted to, but you prefer the more elegant, sophisticated (and more rare or elite) Shogi.

The fact that you have lost all of your chess games so far does not strike me as suggesting that you are unusually untalented for a beginning chess player. On the other hand, finding people to play against might make the experience more fun even if you keep losing. And if you find enough people to play against, eventually you will find someone worse than you. (Or perhaps you should find a group playing speed chess. Less time to figure out all those N moves ahead that the really good players do. (Studiously ignoring the notion that really really good players might think faster or have played enough speed chess to know good moves from bad better than you anyway). )

12

Any good chess games for the Mac? Chessmaster looks like it’s PC only.

And, hey, Loach, I’m flattered when anybody remembers my name, much less my gender. :slight_smile:

13
  1. Chronos discovers that Loach doesn’t read Heinlein ;).

One point I’ll add to what others have said is openings. There are a number of standard ways to start a game, and experts have analyzed them in great depth. Thus, when a skilled player (or a computer, of course) sees you making particular moves at the beginning of the game, that player knows without thinking what moves to make in response, for the first half-dozen moves or so, because all the thinking has already been done. You need to learn an opening or two, and in general how to respond to a few others.

14

Chessmaster 9000 for Mac

15

Just a reminder that MacOS X comes with chess for free.

Windows users get Mindfield; Mac users get chess. You connect the dots.

16

That’s what’s been kicking my ass for a week. :slight_smile:

17

Podkayne, could it be that you are too timid? I’m not a great player by any means, but my game improved markedly when I became less terrified of losing pieces. It’s often well worth sacrificing even a valuable piece, like a bishop or a rook, in order to gain a positional advantage. One gambit that I often used cost me a knight, in the opening stages of the game, but forced my opponent to move his king, thereby barring the possibility of future castling.

18

Just can’t resist a snipe, can you?

19

I’m “aaaah” at best at chess, but I came across a one-trick pony type technique that’s helped me win games, or at least present a challenge.

One chess expert told me the key is to control the center four squares of the board. So I use Gambits as my opening sequence. Say the game starts as both players advance their king or queen pawn two spaces. On my next move, I advance the correspoding bishop pawn two spaces. Ooh, an unprotected pawn! A bright, shiny, juicy delicious pawn! Go ahead and take it! That delicious, lone, virign cattle pawn, just begging to be devoured.

My opponent usually takes it. In so doing, he relinquishes control of the four center squares, and his pawn is one the diagonal of one of my bishops. I’ll eventually take it back and in so doing gain more control of the center. Consequently a big battle opens up that clears away a lot of pieces and leaves less for me to keep track of.

20

I definitely think timidity is one of my problems, Spectre. I always end up playing defense on my side of the board . . . but that’s because when I shove my pieces out there, they get gobbled up. I read somewhere about not thinking about your pieces as individuals, but rather as part of a team. You don’t send one piece out on the attack; you have to advance a piece with some backup. But I’m not very good at it because I’m still working on getting an intuitive feel for how the pieces move. I mean, I understand exactly how each piece is allowed to move, but I need to work on picturing the “threat range” for each piece, and more importantly, the threat coverage of a “team” of peices. And not hamstringing pieces by blocking them my own friggin’ pawns is something else I have trouble with.

And it seems that while I try to scramble pieces for the attack (Ack! So many pieces! All in the wrong places! And I only get to move one per turn!) I’m getting savaged back at my home base. :slight_smile: As with many strategy games, there is an art to finding the balance between attack and defense.

KnowedOut, thanks for the tip! Many web strategy guides have stressed controlling the center squares. That’s very clever . . . I bet it works real good against inexperienced players . . . like my husband . . . wrings hands menacingly.