I have played chess pretty much all of my life.
I learned the moves when I was very young because my older brothers both played. I picked it up off them largely by osmosis. When I was still quite young I joined the junior chess club and when I was again too young for it, I joined the adult chess club. When I moved to London, I used to play in the West London chess club and did quite well at the type of lightning game where you have to make a move every few seconds.
I’m not by any means a brilliant player or anything like that. Perhaps you can gauge a player these days by how they do against a computer. I play the Wii Chess programme at level 3. I win some and I lose some. I draw quite a lot. That’s how I play – not special but I know a bit.
I only ever play against computers and consoles these days and less and less of even that, as time goes on. My failings at chess taunt me now.
I have come to rather fear defeat and so tend to avoid human challenges.
The point of this small post is this: I believe that you can learn a little about yourself by looking at the way you play chess (providing, of course, that you actually play chess – it doesn’t work so good if you don’t know how the pieces move).
Let’s take me as a guinea pig to illustrate the point.
Here’s how I play chess:
I tend to see quite a long way down the line. I can calculate moves and counter-moves in quite a tortuous progression so that sometimes I can put together an attack or a trap which, if it works, can be quite blindingly brilliant to behold.
But wait, this is not an exercise in self-praise, oh no. You see I have a fatal flaw. Fatal. I am always so busy plotting my little machiavellian coups and calculating my materiel exchanges ten moves ahead that, yes, I miss the glaringly obvious. I do this all the time. While I’m trying to figure out how to achieve mate in seven moves, you’ve just taken my bloody Queen off.
And that is how I am in life too. I can sometimes see a thing a little askew or progress a thought a few steps beyond the ordinary and that can look impressive. But, while I’m doing it, I will also be forgetting your name or walking into a lamp post or wondering where the hell I was meant to be going in the first place.
The way I play chess is the way I am in life.
So… how do you play chess?
I’m not by any means a brilliant player or anything like that. Perhaps you can gauge a player these days by how they do against a computer. I play the Wii Chess programme at level 3. I win some and I lose some. I draw quite a lot. That’s how I play – not special but I know a bit.
I only ever play against computers and consoles these days and less and less of even that, as time goes on. My failings at chess taunt me now.
I have come to rather fear defeat and so tend to avoid human challenges.
The point of this small post is this: I believe that you can learn a little about yourself by looking at the way you play chess (providing, of course, that you actually play chess – it doesn’t work so good if you don’t know how the pieces move).
Let’s take me as a guinea pig to illustrate the point.
Here’s how I play chess:
I tend to see quite a long way down the line. I can calculate moves and counter-moves in quite a tortuous progression so that sometimes I can put together an attack or a trap which, if it works, can be quite blindingly brilliant to behold.
But wait, this is not an exercise in self-praise, oh no. You see I have a fatal flaw. Fatal. I am always so busy plotting my little machiavellian coups and calculating my materiel exchanges ten moves ahead that, yes, I miss the glaringly obvious. I do this all the time. While I’m trying to figure out how to achieve mate in seven moves, you’ve just taken my bloody Queen off.
And that is how I am in life too. I can sometimes see a thing a little askew or progress a thought a few steps beyond the ordinary and that can look impressive. But, while I’m doing it, I will also be forgetting your name or walking into a lamp post or wondering where the hell I was meant to be going in the first place.
The way I play chess is the way I am in life.
So… how do you play chess?
