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+--- Thread: Chess/I hate feeling ignored (lol). (/thread-9415.html)
Chess/I hate feeling ignored (lol). - Lee Cahalan - 09-06-2012
This post is about chess but first:
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?10223-New-member-intro&p=54603#post54603
Is my new member intro. And like a lot of stuff I write it ends up in the dungeon. Only after posting it did check out that the most recent post was from last year. Smiles...
So ANYWAY: I walk into my local bar last Thursday to find Dominick and old Jim at the black & white board again. Strong players each, they while away many hours in the 'hood playing chess. As the only spectator I get first dibs on the winner which was Jim. I let him get a couple drinks ahead of me before the match gets too far. The "two beer handicap" lol. A little trickery always helpful. I take white.
For some reason my pieces develop very efficiently. Find that not only I'm controlling the board well but have boxed Old Jim into a corner. My advantage is so solid I never even bother to castle. Why waste time with a defensive move and lose the advantage of PRESSURE? I first go up a couple pawns, then a knight, next a rook for my knight... At this point its just a matter of avoiding huge blunders and trading pieces down. He resigns about the 25th move or so. NEXT!
Dominick I consider the tougher of the two. He's beaten me once and I pulled a lucky draw. Our only two games. Again as if guided by magic my pieces develop better than Dom's. Just to be on the safe side i order him a beer and switch myself over to coke. I go up a piece. Then two more pawns before giving back the knight.
He threatens one of my pawns and I respond by ignoring it and coming up with a more serious threat of my own. An important lesson I learned in a book long ago:
The best way to answer a threat is by ignoring it and coming up with a bigger one against your opponent!
The bigger the threat the better. He wants to harass my pawn? I endanger his rook. Go after my rook? I harass his queen. In this case i simply pushed a passed pawn up the road attacking a larger piece. In addition my pawn is nearer the last rank. Making its promotion to queen a more serious complication to the opponent than the piece it attacks.
A double threat is one of the best moves in chess: Its like you're getting two moves for the price of one.
Dominick responds by trading a few pieces in which he loses some material but prevents my pawn from queening. I respond to his emergency maneuver by checking his king over on the A column with what I believed was a fairly strong move. Would have thought about it longer but feared running into time trouble.
Dominick is the first to notice that he can not move his king out of trouble. Checkmate! and i didn't even notice it first.
How to explain my recent surge in ability? Well this wasn't meant to be a brag share even if it turned out that way. Dom and Old Jim play a helluva lot more chess than I do. Although I do try and solve the chess puzzle daily. I think that finally my chess game has reached a state of wholeness. An apex. That I'm playing more rationally: Developing pieces efficiently, avoiding major blunders and keeping the poor bastards on the run. It ain't because I'm playing more. Just the opposite. Haven't played a real game in at least a year.
We're not talking about grand master status here. Just solid playing. Masters simply must MEMORIZE some 20,000 games in order to sit at the table. Maybe 40,000 games. Modern opening theory is what they've been committing to memory since the early days of Bobby Fischer. If you don't know what lines win in the Sicilian Defense? You are lost by the sixth move in most games no matter how well you play afterwards.
That usually takes many years of study and the capacity of the brain to retain encyclopedia type amounts of information. Thus limiting the master level players to prodigies and super nerds. And only them. You and I won't beat them except hardly ever and then only on our best days. I've known this since i quit chess in high school almost forty years ago. Decided i liked girls better back then. Haven't regretted the decision either.
Coda:
My buddy developed a serious skin ailment back in the service. From exposure to Agent Orange, Vietnam we believe. So his MD put him on a temporary treatment of anabolic steroids to get rid of the rash. A really good chess player anyway but while he was on the steroids he starts winning and drawing against grand masters!!!
Reason? We think that anabolic steroids not only help the body grow muscle mass and strength but allow the brain to make accurate decisions more quickly. Chess is a timed game. You don't have all day to make one mere move. A good player may be able to find the best move but the grand master will find it in 1/4 the time.
Seen in that regard this tale may answer a question about why Barry Bonds was such a strong home run hitter. Assuming he really used steroids (hint: he did). While steroids would have made him stronger plenty of powerful men do not hit home runs well. It takes a special physical knack, well trained eye and instantaneous decision making calculations. You have about 2/10s a second to commit to swing at a pitch. Is a strike or a ball? Curve, slider or fastball?
Thus Bonds may have hit so many home runs in the twilight of his career because the steroids allowed him the extra mental edge. Not so much because they made him stronger.