william18 wrote:strike wolf wrote:jonesthecurl wrote:I played a lot of chess at one point, and got quite good - I used to regulalrly beat a chess program I had at several levels - but last time I tried to play, I just couldn't get my head around it - I think you need to keep the mental chess muscles toned, and I hadn't.
Hmm. I really haven't been able to grasp going more than 3 or 4 moves in advance which the computer seems to be an expert at. I can more or less grasp what the computer wants to do and am starting to come out with more victories because of it but I can't really get a plan to get the king until there is only a few peices left on the board.
I felt rather stupid in my last game too. I was trying so hard to get a check mate that I failed to notice as I moved my queen right in position to get jumped by a pawn and ended up losing.
I just read the thread and heard chess. In grade three, I was a little less then prodigy in chess. I was beating everyone, including the grade 8's. At the age of 8, I was arguably the best, if not one of the best players in a school of 8 grades. Now im super rusty.
The point at which I became really good at chess was when a guy I worked with started talking about the queen's pawn opening. He thought it was foolproof, I thought not, so we palyed a few games. Then I changed jobs, so we continued the debate by playing one move a day over the phone. This meant that for each move I made, I'd studied a whole day. There was ego, alpha-male, macho, boasting rights involved. A few months later I'd proved my point, and we stopped. After that, my game gradually weakened.