# Anyone play chess?



## Amfibius (Jul 19, 2006)

I had an interesting chess game today at work. I have a Russian patient who speaks no English. He is a cantankerous old man. A number of times he had to be given sedatives for aggression towards staff. 

Today I saw that he had a chess set by his bedside when I was doing my ward round. In sign language I indicated that we should have a game. After I finished my round, I went back and he had the board set up. I played black, he was white. 

For most of the game, I thought I was winning. His pawns were underdeveloped, and his pieces remained in the back row. I had firm control of the center, had castled, and my pieces were out and applying pressure on his king. 

All it took was for him to sacrifice a pawn, then I suddenly saw that all his pieces could be lined up for a long range counterattack with my own pieces too far forward (and hindered by my own pawns) to rush back for defence. He broke out in a huge grin, and when I eventually surrendered he laughed his head off and gave me a big hug. 

Moral of the story: don't write someone off because he can't speak English. 

Moral no. 2: don't challenge an elderly Russian man to a game of chess, no matter how many sedatives he is on. 

Anyone here play chess?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I've played chess billions of times. I've managed to come fourth place in my old school's chess tournament without getting a single player in checkmate!  Beat them because they all ran out if time. Heheh. Actually I've only one a game of chess properly _once._ Lost heaps of times though. There was one time where I lost to a guy who was _so_ bad at chess I had to _point out_ the blatantly obvious move that would get me in checkmate because the game was going absolutely nowhere and we only had a few pieces left.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I played chess in competition until the late eighties (Dutch second division, ELO around 2000). Only play it a few times per year recreationally nowadays within the family. Both my brother and my father are reasonably strong chess players as well (my father was correspondence chess champion of the Netherlands in the nineties).


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

My mind isn't very good with patterns, and chess seems to me to be a game of pattern recognition. I've played a few games in the past couple of years, but really I lost my mind for strategy in my teens.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

I enjoy playing it occasionally, but I've never taken the time to memorize openings like it seems everyone else does. Incidentally, though, that's exactly why I was able to beat my friends in high school--they all memorized common openings, so when I didn't do what they expected, they were thrown off.  They still beat me most of the time, though.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Art Rock said:


> I played chess in competition until the late eighties (Dutch second division, ELO around 2000). Only play it a few times per year recreationally nowadays within the family. Both my brother and my father are reasonably strong chess players as well (my father was correspondence chess champion of the Netherlands in the nineties).


Wow, that's pretty impressive.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

We have a Social Group for that. It's kind of languishing now... 
but maybe it can come back to life a little.


ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> There was one time where I lost to a guy who was _so_ bad at chess I had to _point out_ the blatantly obvious move that would get me in checkmate because the game was going absolutely nowhere and we only had a few pieces left.


Next time something like that happens, see if you can swindle a draw by trying to induce your opponent into blundering his way into stalemate, or (perhaps) claim the draw via 50 moves without a pawn moved or piece captured (e.g.: an opponent who doesn't know how to apply the mating sequence for B+N+K vs. lone K, for example).


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## larifari (Sep 5, 2011)

A guy walks through the park and sees this old guy playing chess opposite of his dog. The old guy makes a move, the dog makes a move. Again and again. The guy watches in amazement.

Before he has to go on, he tells the old guy: "That is one smart doggie you have there!"

To which the old guy replies: "Heck, not so smart! I beat him three times out of five!"


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## larifari (Sep 5, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I've played chess billions of times. I've managed to come fourth place in my old school's chess tournament without getting a single player in checkmate!  Beat them because they all ran out if time. Heheh. Actually I've only one a game of chess properly _once._ Lost heaps of times though. There was one time where I lost to a guy who was _so_ bad at chess I had to _point out_ the blatantly obvious move that would get me in checkmate because the game was going absolutely nowhere and we only had a few pieces left.


BILLIONS of times?

Now we know how seriously we can take any of your posts.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

larifari said:


> BILLIONS of times?
> 
> Now we know how seriously we can take any of your posts.


I wonder if he thought you'd notice?


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## GoneBaroque (Jun 16, 2011)

I like the gam but unfortunately do not play enough to be any good.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

I play chess from my teenage year and still remain my most serious hobby nowdays. I play in online correspondence chess right now and follow the chess news. My laptop will probably always on with online transmission of today's GM chess (this week is a classic Wijk Aan Zee tournament) and enjoy the game with a string quartet as background music.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

larifari said:


> BILLIONS of times?
> 
> Now we know how seriously we can take any of your posts.


Well, definitely hundreds of times. Possibly almost 1000 times.


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

I played my two billionth + 1 game yesterday on my iPhone. I resigned, having brought my Queen out too early, uh duh.



larifari said:


> BILLIONS of times?
> 
> Now we know how seriously we can take any of your posts.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Well, definitely hundreds of times. Possibly almost 1000 times.


Now that I think of it, probably over 1000 times.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

I used to play chess a lot in my youthful years. My Dad was an excellent player and taught me the game. I later taught my own Son the game and we spent many hours enjoying that time spent together. 

Presently, I haven't played chess for about 5 years or so ... no partner ... well, my wife is my partner in life, but she has absolutely no interest in learning the game, and that's fine, too. 

I still have the original chessboard my Dad made with inlaid wooden squares and wooden borders between the squares, as well as the chess pieces he had when he was in the military service (1935). 

Kh


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

My Dad taught me chess, and when I beat him soundly after a couple of weeks, he had me learn from my Papa. Now, my Papa (Walter) was something of a savant at Blackjack and spent years trying to master it, eventually concluding that you just don't win at Blackjack (not lightly). Having a natural aptitude for puzzles, he took up chess and started routing the Manteca chess clubs. Being just a poor prison guard, he didn't see himself going anywhere, so he just resolved to be a perpetual student of the game. When my Dad came to meet him for the first time, they played chess for a few hours, and my Dad just couldn't win.

So if I was to be an ace, then Papa was to be my first real teacher. We played on and off for a couple of years, and he fed me chess literature and classic games to study, always telling me about Ruey Lopez's game against a GM at the age of twelve. After I could consistently beat him, he felt that I should get more serious about chess, but I opted for music instead. You might call me something of a polymath, because my whole life has been dotted with direction changes presented to me.

Now that I've done all I care to on the music stage, I might consider getting back into serious chess playing, but I'd rather just make money writing articles for the Philosophia Christi, because my greatest passion has always been 1st century history. There's chess, and then there's unraveling the true people behind the supposed lunatics that were Nero, Vespasian, and Caligula. One just seems more consequential than the other to me. Not to mention that there's a finer literary tradition for me to follow, so I'm hooked.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

Lukecash12 said:


> My Dad taught me chess, and when I beat him soundly after a couple of weeks . . .


Out of the hundreds of chess games my Dad and I played, I only won one time - he was _that_ good. I do not know to this day if he let me win that one game out of kindness, or if I actually whipped him fair and square.



Lukecash12 said:


> . . . and he fed me chess literature and classic games to study, always telling me about Ruey Lopez's game against a GM at the age of twelve.


I still have the copy of Lasker's Chess Primer Dad gave me when learning the game - written by a former World Chess champion, Dr. Emanuel Lasker.

I have often wondered if there is a relation between Chess and Classical music - a natural fit for the two, in my opinion anyway.

Kh


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Krummhorn said:


> Out of the hundreds of chess games my Dad and I played, I only won one time - he was _that_ good. I do not know to this day if he let me win that one game out of kindness, or if I actually whipped him fair and square.


Yeah... My dad wasn't that kind of a chess player. My Papa may have been, but I don't think so. There came a point where I could only play people who stood a chance against me in tournaments, and I had other things on my mind, so I didn't do anything with chess. Nowadays I'll follow my favorite GM's and keep current on the new openings and positions, getting excited when something's been brought back out of the canon like, say, Evan's Gambit, and I'll even play some chess online. However, I've got other ways to spend my time, and those ways make me money.

Recently, I've been studying stock brokering. Do you folks have any experience in it?



> I still have the copy of Lasker's Chess Primer Dad gave me when learning the game - written by a former World Chess champion, Dr. Emanuel Lasker.
> 
> I have often wondered if there is a relation between Chess and Classical music - a natural fit for the two, in my opinion anyway.
> 
> Kh


There are some marked cognitive differences between GM's and maestros, but I can see that there are definitely great dilettantes out there. Basically, the masters in these respective disciplines use different parts of their brains to do different tasks.


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