Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Chess!

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

21:12 / 11.10.02

Who plays? By "play" I of course mean "am an addict". This game is so gripping. I've recently started playing again, after a year or so break. God, I've missed it.

Essay questions:

0. Do your non-playing friends often get sick of hanging out with you and other chess playing friends? God knows mine do occasionally. I try to pity them, or to take their feelings into consideration, but c'mon. It's chess. They can sit through just one more...

1. Why is it so much fun?

2. Do you ever play stoned, or drunk, or tripping, or fucked up somehow? How is it different? Do you generally do better or worse?

3. Are you any good? So what?

Feel free to add questions.

My answers:

1. Hard to say. It's just a game of black and white, no matter how close you look. But if you're good enough, you make some fun shades of gray.

2. I often play stoned, and I generally do worse. Although in school I tried developing a way to play as "effortlessly as possible", sort of a Zen chess technique. Most of the time it sucked ass, but when it worked, I smashed players better than me almost effortlessly. I have to be stoned to do it, unfortunately...

3. I'm not bad. So there.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

05:53 / 12.10.02

1- dunno why it's so much fun. It just is.

2- Chess on acid is fucking wonderful. My game's a lot worse, but the whole concept, the movement of highly symbolic shapes in arcane patterns, seems much more significant somehow. Goes on for hours, though, and you keep forgetting whose turn it is.

3- I have my moments.

07:02 / 12.10.02

1: Like stoatie, I've no idea, but it is.

2: Chess on speed is very silly. You play really badly because you're just so desperate to move the pieces around you don't consider at all the consequences of your actions....but you do get loads more games in. Quantity over quality.

3: I'm terrible against anyone worth their salt. I really struggle with working out my opponents moves. I can see what I want to do for the next 10 moves but I just can't get my opponents plans into my head however hard I try.

10:08 / 12.10.02

0. I´m not in the habit of letting my non-playing friends know that I hang out in public playing chess. Picture the conversation:

"So I was having this great game of chess the other night ..."

*tumbleweeds*

Having said that, chess, like backgammon or maybe dominoes (sp?) has that kind of hanging-out-in-cafes-with-old-dudes cool about it, so it´s okay to come out of the closet occasionally, but no non-players I know would want to hang about and watch ´cause it´s just too slow. It´s like a ten minute guitar solo; it´s generally only interesting to watch if you also play yourself.

1. Because it´s a simple game like anything else, but there is so much room for intelligent play, that you really feel like you´ve had a mental workout while still just hanging out and chatting and having fun.

2. I´ve played drunk and am usually about the same, or sometimes better, as I don´t over-think everything and therefore escape my habit of tripping over myself.

3. Fairly good in the regular person category. I was good at school and always thought I had a good game until I met a group of adults who played regularly and I went along and got spanked good and proper. But playing with them was exhilirating because I learned so much. Now it´s been a couple of years since I´ve had a game. Maybe it´s time soon ...

10:40 / 12.10.02

1. Why is it so much fun?

I think a lot of it has to do with the martial aspect. At some level or another we all like the conflict of such games, and the thought of my loyal hordes sweeping mercilessly across a chequered landscape gets me giggling like a schoolgirl.

2. Do you ever play stoned, or drunk, or tripping, or fucked up somehow? How is it different? Do you generally do better or worse?

Once when stoned I setup the board in order to prove to myself that I was a better player than my subconscious. I can recall sitting at the board. I can't recall a game going ahead, however.

3. Are you any good? So what?

When not stoned, drunk, pilling, or otherwise in a fucked state then yeah, I'm pretty good.

23:24 / 12.10.02

1. Because it's beautiful.
2. Yes, but like conversation and sex, I think I'm doing it a lot better than I actually am.
3. I am shit.

22:03 / 13.10.02

Recently, I have sucked hard for the whole game, and then suddenly I notice that I am two moves from checkmate and I win. I've played straight, and on caffeine.

gozer the destructor

22:34 / 13.10.02

Chess is so purely tactical, I think that's the addiction with me. I try not to play when high as my game just turns to shit. Having said that though I did beat my boss three times in a row when pissed and thoroughly enjoyed it. My openings and middle are reasonably good but my endgame is never brilliant, normally consisting of me struggling to check let alone mate. My flat mates awesome at it and always criticises me for playing to aggresively. I always go for a quick game.

Chess! Yes!

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

15:31 / 14.10.02

My openings and middle are reasonably good but my endgame is never brilliant,...

It's just the opposite with me. My openings are all so tired to me, so very very boring. I've yet to come across a really good opening strategy. Even all the really good tournament players I've played against admit to basically just trying to get a controlling grip on the middle of the board as soon as possible.

gozer the destructor

07:35 / 15.10.02

There's a book out called 'the mammoth book of chess', once you've bought that you really won't need another. And for a new opening that always results in an intresting game try the 'Evans Gambit'.

14:42 / 15.10.02

Used to play a lot - say three games a day, six day a week, for five years solid.
Then I stopped - I could not stand chess players anymore, and I was starting dreaming games at night.
Now I'm happily playing Go.
In really small doses.

Anyway....

1 . it's fun because it's purely intellectual.
It's my mind against yours, using the chessboard as a very primitive but effective interface.

2 . never played in an alterated state. On the other hand, chess in itself is an addiction that makes alcohol look like kid's stuff.
That's why I'm rather pleased I kicked the habit.

3 . on good days, I used to be pretty good.

15:27 / 15.10.02

Chess is fun because it is an idealized world in which it is possible to derive beauty and elegance from a few simple rules.

I like to think about chess when I'm on hallucinogens but even with the aid of recording devices, I am never able to bring back any brilliant insights from the drug world. I find chess totally boring when I'm using marijuana.

I am a very enthusiastic, slow, really incredibly poor player. With great effort, I was able to draw my eleven year old cousin who was still reading the instructions to remind himself how the pieces moved. Despite this, I am sure I could rise to mediocrity if I ever found a partner who could tolerate my horrible play long enough for me to get in a couple of games.

4. Who are your chess heroes? I revere Morphy whose style is so swashbuckling.

14:33 / 17.10.02

My openings and middle are reasonably good but my endgame is never brilliant

A good endgame seems to require a lot of memorization of specific situations. When you start getting decent at chess you go and learn a few funky openings, then you play with these for a while and see what type of middle games you get, and your general skill level gets better, and that's about the position I got to.

But endgames seem to involve memorizing that when player x has pieces a, b, and c and player y has pieces d, e, and f, then player x will win, or that player x's aim should be to neutralize y's piece f, or that if x gets piece a into a certain part of the board, that it's either draw or win. I was too lazy to learn that stuff so even if you have reasonable ability, if the other person knows these facts and can put all their energy into a specific aim, they're going to get you most of the time.

Reading all this stuff in chess books is really interesting though, and then you find yourself in your room with a book and a chess board for hours on end, which is possibly not the point of a two player game, but still ...

22:49 / 17.10.02

Mmmm, yes, I read much more chess than I play.

gozer the destructor

07:19 / 18.10.02

What openings are popular with you lot then? I've already talked about the Evans Gambit and of course there's Giuoco Piano which every one knows...but what whacked up openings have you tried?

Kings indian was the last one I had a bash at but I wasn't that impressed, led to a very tricky tight game for myself.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

09:25 / 20.10.02

Goddamnit! I though you where talking about the musical.