l'm on again and off again with the game. Against computer programs I've never gotten past beginner level, but the fact that I'd won a couple feels like a small victory

In the past I'd read a couple of books on strategy, but they feel sporadically applicable in the face of real play

But who plays ?

I play Chess, very poorly, mostly by app. Fischer's 'Teaches Chess' is very dry but good. The Kasparov video Masterclass series is excellent, but he does move quickly. I've actually found lessons and puzzles from the chess app on my phone to be the most useful.

I play but at a poor level. Mostly apps but I play the occasional game physically.

No need for books with the million twitters, subreddits, facebook groups, & YouTube channels out there
White mates in 2.

I don't play chess because it seems like there's so much intellectual effort been put into the game and its various strategies, it feels like it would take a lifetime of study just to be shit at it. I appreciate it but I'll surely never be good at it. I thought it was interesting that crazy fucker Bobby Fischer, in later life, preferred to play his own chess variant where the pieces are placed in random order. He said it was more creative; you can't rely on learned patterns. No Sicilian Defense for you.

I find these kinds of determinative games fascinating. I went down a rabbit hole once learning about the history of chess and all the different regional variants; the Indian, Chinese and Japanese versions, all the different pieces and various ways they move; the differences and commonalities. Chinese chess is pretty rad, it has cannons and castles and elephants.

And I can handle little puzzles like the one above.

[spoiler]
move the bishop to D5 to check the king, black pawn is forced to take the bishop, and white castle shoots the gap all the way to the end zone to fuck up the black king's day

Anthony Flack wrote: Fri Jun 24, 2022 7:38 am I don't play chess because it seems like there's so much intellectual effort been put into the game and its various strategies, it feels like it would take a lifetime of study just to be shit at it.

My feeling is the exact opposite. It takes a couple of minutes to learn everything you need. Of course mastering the game takes a lot of effort, but you can choose how much you put into it. I don't know your position, but my experience of getting into the game again recently is of being a little overwhelmed by all these strategy guides and this is how you open and so on so that I forget that the point, after all, is to play.

I'd like to look into the Japanese version. Although it feels a little weird and confusing to just have tiles with signs on them.


Fun facts about chess:
Judging by the etymologies, the game arrives in Europe from India via Persia. The original game is called chaturanga in Sanskrit, or shatranj in Persian. The name chess and its other cognates - German Schach, Swedish schack, Italian scacchi - are derived from the Persian word shâh, which means king. Checkmate (Schachmatt, etc.) comes from shâh mât, which means "the king is helpless" or "the king is defeated".
The name for the rook comes from Persian rokh - possibly from a Sanskrit word for chariot. The "bishops", in Sweden we call them "runners", are actually elephants. Pawns, known as peasants in Sweden, are called soldiers (sarbâz) in Persian. And the queen is originally a vezir (so like a chancellor or something).

The main thing with the Japanese one from what I could tell, besides that all the pieces have a Super Saiyan form, is that you can reintroduce pieces to the board, and when doing so you can drop them anywhere. Which makes the range of possible responses potentially much larger.

This wouldn't necessarily make the game more difficult to master, though. Being less predictable may even have the opposite effect - though it seems like all the chess variants are strategically deep. The board layout and the way the pieces move is different in each form but always based around checking the king.

I'm still no good at chess, but for the first time in my life I've felt a sense of improvement. A large part of that has been simply taking the time on each move.

It's a wonderful game and, like all the best games, every moment of frustration offers a piece of learning that has absolute clarity.

An artist friend of mine with whom I've been creatively and romantically involved in the past is a big chess nut, to the point that she made an art piece/installation centered around it. Something to the effect of rows of pawns on both sides maneuvering around the board such that they all become queens and then exist harmoniously. Not very war-like, in the end.

I've played chess in the past but when others have tried to get me into playing it more recently I've shied away, mostly because I have an inkling of how involved its inner workings can be and I don't have the mental space to do it all justice. Got several hobbies already and juggling them isn't always easy.

I do like that Marcel Duchamp, in his later years, seems to have been more interested in playing chess than churning out art all of the time. It's an elegant pastime in some ways, and I like that it doesn't require much money or any electricity to play it.

Chess is a fun mind game, but I have basically no knowledge of opening moves. My understanding, based on conversations with friends who know a little about chess is that studying openings is essential and you'll never win against any serious player without knowing what kind of game you both are playing. Anyone have any toughts or advice on all that?