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Re-learning chess
14 July 2007
[indent]At my father's funeral, I recalled in my eulogy two things he gave me me: he brought me up in a house where reading was respected and he taught me to play chess. Yes, he did a lot more for me, but these two things stood out in my memory.
Dad taught me chess at an early age; six or eight years old. I proceeded to teach every other kid in the neighbourhood, and beat them at it, but my father continued to soundly defeat me for many more years. I never studied the game, of course, I simply learned through experience and practice - a trial and error method that didn't always serve me well. It wasn't until I was in my 20s that I started to seriously study chess, but by that time it was too late for me to become really good. You need to put your energy into the game earlier, to study it seriously - like Bobby Fischer did - to be great at it. I had some natural but unpolished skills.
I beat my father at chess, finally, when I was about 12. After that, he was reluctant to play me. As the line goes, I coulda been a contender, had I focused on the game. But what does a 12-year-old think about championship chess?
Chess taught me a lot of things outside the board: how to plan, to think ahead, to develop strategy, to approach things in concert, to maneuver, and to fight. I was a small kid, and having skipped a year I was smaller and younger than my classmates, so chess was a substitute for fighting in the school yard. I couldn't beat the bigger kids at any game, but I trounced all comers at chess.
In my 20s, chess was the game everyone around me played, all my friends, even my ex-wife. We played it passionately, absorbed in the game, sitting long into the early morning hours to finish games. We got together for meals or drinks and chess. We would gather at my place to watch Monty Python on CBC then pay chess. We carried chess sets into restaurants and bars. I have a black-and-white picture of me taken in 1974, playing a friend on a big plastic chess set I bought, one with towering 8" kings and a funny checkered shag rug for a board.
When my best friend, Stan, was in Alberta and BC, we kept in touch as chessplayers, playing correspondence chess, making extravagant efforts for each move, sending one another bizarre letters and packages with our next move. I still have one of his photo collages with the move P-K3 marked.
I was good then, not great, but pretty good, and what I lacked in skill I made up for in passion and recklessness. I beat most people at the board, except the really gifted few. I remember Ray, a terrific, aggressive player, who almost always won against me. I really liked playing him because it was always a challenge, and I learned a lot from those games, and enjoyed the challenge of trying to beat him, which though seldom was worth the joy it gave me.
Sometime between the late 1970s and today, I lost my ability and along with it my passion for chess. Time, other interests, sex, pets, motorcycles, computers, guitar, work - they all took their toll. My chess became mediocre, lacklustre, dull. And along with my own passion I lost most of my chess-playing friends. People married, moved, developed new interests, moved on.
By the late 1980s In hardly played at all. And when I moved to Collingwood, in 1990, I didn't know anyone who played at all. I played maybe a half dozen games in the last 17 years, none of which were well played, or even vaguely memorable. I had almost forgotten chess until recently. I was writing my weekly technology column and chose to write about the recent human-versus-machine chess championships. That sparked my interest in playing again. I bought a couple of chess programs to play at home, a few chess books, and ever since I've been reading more, opening long-closed chess books, even playing a few games against my computer opponents - mostly losing. But losing can usually teach you more than winning.
When my friend Bill came to visit last weekend, we played several games - all of which I lost. Damn, how had I let my skills go so rusty? I have the advantage in one game only, and simply lost it. I couldn't see two moves ahead, let alone the five or six I used to be able to see. It's not like Bill's been playing anyone in the last decade or two. Matter of fact, I was probably the last person he played against when we both worked for InfoAge, a computer magazine, 20 years ago. He still retained some of his skill and talent. Mine seems to have evaporated. We were a lot more evenly matched back when, although he still beat me most games. Maybe I should have had less wine.
So now I'm studying again, reading, practicing, trying to recover some of that edge, that talent, the ability to look ahead several moves and parse through the moves to find the right combination. Looking for the edge, the brilliancy, the pointed end of the attack. I'm taking books of chess problems to work and to bed with me, sitting on the porch in the fading evening with a glass of wine and a book of opening studies and exercises. I'm reading chess columns online and surfing chess sites.
I'm enjoying chess again, although I'm still a very bad patzer and can't really understand the analysis of the games like I used to. My look-ahead skills are dulled, my tactical sense somnambulent. But I'm working at it. I'm even considering getting myself a new chess set, something nice, something with some elegance, a nice Staunton set with 4" kings and triple-weighted, although my skills don't warrant anything excessive or expensive. It's nice to have a set that gives the aesthetic sense, not just some hobby-store plastic set.
And as I work at my skills, and work though the problems, I sometimes sit back and remember playing against my father and how much those games meant to me. [/indent]
Dad taught me chess at an early age; six or eight years old. I proceeded to teach every other kid in the neighbourhood, and beat them at it, but my father continued to soundly defeat me for many more years. I never studied the game, of course, I simply learned through experience and practice - a trial and error method that didn't always serve me well. It wasn't until I was in my 20s that I started to seriously study chess, but by that time it was too late for me to become really good. You need to put your energy into the game earlier, to study it seriously - like Bobby Fischer did - to be great at it. I had some natural but unpolished skills.
I beat my father at chess, finally, when I was about 12. After that, he was reluctant to play me. As the line goes, I coulda been a contender, had I focused on the game. But what does a 12-year-old think about championship chess?
Chess taught me a lot of things outside the board: how to plan, to think ahead, to develop strategy, to approach things in concert, to maneuver, and to fight. I was a small kid, and having skipped a year I was smaller and younger than my classmates, so chess was a substitute for fighting in the school yard. I couldn't beat the bigger kids at any game, but I trounced all comers at chess.
In my 20s, chess was the game everyone around me played, all my friends, even my ex-wife. We played it passionately, absorbed in the game, sitting long into the early morning hours to finish games. We got together for meals or drinks and chess. We would gather at my place to watch Monty Python on CBC then pay chess. We carried chess sets into restaurants and bars. I have a black-and-white picture of me taken in 1974, playing a friend on a big plastic chess set I bought, one with towering 8" kings and a funny checkered shag rug for a board.
When my best friend, Stan, was in Alberta and BC, we kept in touch as chessplayers, playing correspondence chess, making extravagant efforts for each move, sending one another bizarre letters and packages with our next move. I still have one of his photo collages with the move P-K3 marked.
I was good then, not great, but pretty good, and what I lacked in skill I made up for in passion and recklessness. I beat most people at the board, except the really gifted few. I remember Ray, a terrific, aggressive player, who almost always won against me. I really liked playing him because it was always a challenge, and I learned a lot from those games, and enjoyed the challenge of trying to beat him, which though seldom was worth the joy it gave me.
Sometime between the late 1970s and today, I lost my ability and along with it my passion for chess. Time, other interests, sex, pets, motorcycles, computers, guitar, work - they all took their toll. My chess became mediocre, lacklustre, dull. And along with my own passion I lost most of my chess-playing friends. People married, moved, developed new interests, moved on.
By the late 1980s In hardly played at all. And when I moved to Collingwood, in 1990, I didn't know anyone who played at all. I played maybe a half dozen games in the last 17 years, none of which were well played, or even vaguely memorable. I had almost forgotten chess until recently. I was writing my weekly technology column and chose to write about the recent human-versus-machine chess championships. That sparked my interest in playing again. I bought a couple of chess programs to play at home, a few chess books, and ever since I've been reading more, opening long-closed chess books, even playing a few games against my computer opponents - mostly losing. But losing can usually teach you more than winning.
When my friend Bill came to visit last weekend, we played several games - all of which I lost. Damn, how had I let my skills go so rusty? I have the advantage in one game only, and simply lost it. I couldn't see two moves ahead, let alone the five or six I used to be able to see. It's not like Bill's been playing anyone in the last decade or two. Matter of fact, I was probably the last person he played against when we both worked for InfoAge, a computer magazine, 20 years ago. He still retained some of his skill and talent. Mine seems to have evaporated. We were a lot more evenly matched back when, although he still beat me most games. Maybe I should have had less wine.
So now I'm studying again, reading, practicing, trying to recover some of that edge, that talent, the ability to look ahead several moves and parse through the moves to find the right combination. Looking for the edge, the brilliancy, the pointed end of the attack. I'm taking books of chess problems to work and to bed with me, sitting on the porch in the fading evening with a glass of wine and a book of opening studies and exercises. I'm reading chess columns online and surfing chess sites.
I'm enjoying chess again, although I'm still a very bad patzer and can't really understand the analysis of the games like I used to. My look-ahead skills are dulled, my tactical sense somnambulent. But I'm working at it. I'm even considering getting myself a new chess set, something nice, something with some elegance, a nice Staunton set with 4" kings and triple-weighted, although my skills don't warrant anything excessive or expensive. It's nice to have a set that gives the aesthetic sense, not just some hobby-store plastic set.
And as I work at my skills, and work though the problems, I sometimes sit back and remember playing against my father and how much those games meant to me. [/indent]
