On Chess

I am a great big geek, as most of you know, and as such I have a certain fascination with chess. I didn't play it when I was young, and I'm not sure whether it was because I didn't have anyone to play it with me, or whether I wasn't nearly as interested in sitting down for long periods as i am now. I really don't know, but suffice it to say, I came to chess later on in life. I'm playing every day now, pretty much. I'm reading books, talking with people, watching documentaries on major players when I can, etc. I wouldn't say I've jumped in with both feet yet, as I haven't joined a local club, looked into private tutoring or really even played much with anyone but a few friends who are similarly interested in the game. I also haven't gotten to play "over the board" as much as I'd like, since the friends I have who also enjoy chess are almost all situated a goodly ways from me.

In any case, one of the things that I've noticed about chess is that playing online is way tougher than playing on a real board. When looking at a real chess set and a real opponent, you see things you don't really notice or have no access to when playing on a computer. It's tough to explain, but there's a certain element of playing the opponent in real life that doesn't exist on the internet. It's almost like poker in a way. You can watch their eyes, see where they're looking, notice if they're unsure of a particular move, or if they're surprised by one of your own moves. Psyching out an opponent is as effective in chess as in any other game or sport, maybe more so, since mistakes are so easily made and so difficult to recover from.

Another major thing about chess is that a huge number of people seem to think that memorizing the games of grandmasters and playing the moves they played when presented with the same position constitutes playing a good game of chess. I entirely disagree. You're playing chess like a computer when you do that. You're not actually thinking about the position, your pieces, your opponent, or even your goals with the move. It's simply regurgitating what you've seen before. people who do this can probably play better than I do and a lot of them can certainly beat me, but I don't think that's the point. When I play chess, it's me playing. it's my brain looking at the pieces and deciding what should go where. When someone plays a game based solely on what they read in a book (and there are so many books and databases out there, most every position has been recorded at some point) it takes the player out of the equation to a large extent. The other player might as well be playing against the book, or better yet, not playing at all, since he's likely just repeating moves out of the book, too. This reliance on games that have come before seems to take the game out of chess. I don't mean to say that understanding the games of great players is a useless exercise, but the focus needs to be on understanding why things were done, not just what was done.

In any case, it's something I'm really enjoying and if anyone wants to play a game, please let me know. I'd be happy to help you bump your rating any time.