An Early Love
One of the reasons why I haven't been diligent lately about posting anything anywhere every day is that once again I've returned to one of my earliest and biggest loves, chess.
With the latest in his series of bloggers chess games, always happily punctuated with his trademark self-critical refrain, "I suck at chess," Guy Andrew Hall, the Rooks Rant guy, unintentionally reminded me that I might want to pay the glorious Lady Caissa yet another visit.
I started playing chess so long ago, though I was already somewhat late to be learning it! I was a teenager. It was in 1946 I believe, over 60 years ago. But I haven't played it incessantly ever since. Instead, as with just about everything else, except the essential stuff like eating, breathing, and sleeping, I've taken long sabbaticals from it, and that's all to the good. I really don't think you should play something like chess all your livelong life. Too constant a diet of it, like so many other ordinarily delightful and even beneficial things, in the long run can't be good for your innards, or for your brain processes.
So far, as always, the way that Caissa has been treating me this time has been interesting. For one thing, I've been forced essentially to learn the game all over again. It's the memory thing, you know. Gone are most of my pet lines in the opening. Gone are most of the basic traps that you have to know merely to get out of the opening still in one piece. Gone is the quickness to make the calculations necessary for surviving the firestorms of the middle game. And gone are most of the principles needed for negotiating the exacting precisions of the endgame.
But mostly it's the quickness.
Living in the sticks, I am restricted to playing chess strictly online, and on the site that I use most of the time, the Free Internet Chess Server, the great majority of the players play various flavors of blitz -- making ALL your moves in periods ranging from one to 15 minutes total. I can't deal with that, even though at one time I had a quick sight of the board. Can you believe it! In 1950 I finished no less than second in the national junior blitz championship, in Philadelphia. I think that was five minutes per game.
One of the main things I like about chess is making the calculations, but now even 20 minutes per game is too short a time to make any in which I can take much pleasure. Yet when playing even slower, I find that I overlook too much stuff.
But this isn't fhe first time that I am saved by having so many other interests to help me keep up my equilibrium, when the mistakes I make at chess get too numerous and too aggravating.
With the latest in his series of bloggers chess games, always happily punctuated with his trademark self-critical refrain, "I suck at chess," Guy Andrew Hall, the Rooks Rant guy, unintentionally reminded me that I might want to pay the glorious Lady Caissa yet another visit.
I started playing chess so long ago, though I was already somewhat late to be learning it! I was a teenager. It was in 1946 I believe, over 60 years ago. But I haven't played it incessantly ever since. Instead, as with just about everything else, except the essential stuff like eating, breathing, and sleeping, I've taken long sabbaticals from it, and that's all to the good. I really don't think you should play something like chess all your livelong life. Too constant a diet of it, like so many other ordinarily delightful and even beneficial things, in the long run can't be good for your innards, or for your brain processes.
So far, as always, the way that Caissa has been treating me this time has been interesting. For one thing, I've been forced essentially to learn the game all over again. It's the memory thing, you know. Gone are most of my pet lines in the opening. Gone are most of the basic traps that you have to know merely to get out of the opening still in one piece. Gone is the quickness to make the calculations necessary for surviving the firestorms of the middle game. And gone are most of the principles needed for negotiating the exacting precisions of the endgame.
But mostly it's the quickness.
Living in the sticks, I am restricted to playing chess strictly online, and on the site that I use most of the time, the Free Internet Chess Server, the great majority of the players play various flavors of blitz -- making ALL your moves in periods ranging from one to 15 minutes total. I can't deal with that, even though at one time I had a quick sight of the board. Can you believe it! In 1950 I finished no less than second in the national junior blitz championship, in Philadelphia. I think that was five minutes per game.
One of the main things I like about chess is making the calculations, but now even 20 minutes per game is too short a time to make any in which I can take much pleasure. Yet when playing even slower, I find that I overlook too much stuff.
But this isn't fhe first time that I am saved by having so many other interests to help me keep up my equilibrium, when the mistakes I make at chess get too numerous and too aggravating.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 11:42 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Carl. Just dropping by to answer your question about the diagrams at my blog. I use a chess program called ChessMaster GrandMaster Edition. After making a move, I take a screen shot, than I paste that into my photographic program Coral Paint Shop Pro Photo XI.
I do not know of any programs that create diagrams expressly for posting on websites.
Thanks, Rook.
I still use an old photo program called CompuPic. It may allow me to do the same thing. Gameknot will send its daily problem diagram to blogger sites like mine every day, but I want to post positions of my own choosing.
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