Thursday, March 23, 2017

2017/03/23 - Chess

I play a lot of chess.

There were times when I played a lot more, but for the past three years of retirement I've only played 2,818 games according to my online chess club: chess.com. That averages out to about 3 games per day.

They say you are supposed to get worse as you get older, but that's not happening yet to me. In fact, as of today my official Blitz chess rating is the highest it's ever been. 

And oddly, that's part of the reason I'm writing this now, to avoid playing another game and risk ruining my high score. Does that sound crazy? It does to me, but I know two people who have stopped playing rated chess games altogether for fear they will lower their good rating. And these are people who love chess!

So three games a day for the past three years comes to about an hour every day that I devote to this addiction. For me this is like maintenance, because there have been times when I was playing too much and had to quit cold-turkey for fear the stress was ruining my health.

Ah yes, the stress of chess... I like to play speed chess. That's where each player gets a specific allotted amount of time to think about moves. I play 10 minutes games. That's a slow game by speed chess standards. It gives each player ten minutes of thinking time for the entire game. So while a player is thinking about a move, their 10-minute time is counting down, but when they make the move, their clock stops and their opponent's time starts counting down.

In speed chess you can win in two ways. You can win buy checkmating your opponent, or you can win when your opponent's time runs out. Conversely, you can lose in two ways. You can be checkmated, or your time could run out, even if you are winning the game!

I could be a good chess player. This my sound like conceit, but flaws in my personality destine me to mediocrity. Well actually a little bit better than mediocrity, I'm currently at the 80.0% percentile within the club of 486,000 players. 

Unfortunately a combination of impulsiveness, attention deficit, cockiness, and inability to strictly follow a proven thought process keeps me from getting to the 90% percentile. 

And I can forget about getting higher that that. I think that group has a touch of autism.

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