Chess players?

C.S. Graves said:
Yep. I think the rigidity of the openings of western chess can discourage beginners and amateurs from improving... all that memorization is quite the task. Fischer himself made a variant of the game where the position of the pieces could be randomised somewhat to make traditional opening knowledge a non-issue. There's historical precedent for such an approach in games like sittuyin - Burmese chess.

Spooky, I'm in the same boat with regards to having no one to play with. Especially to play my favourite variants with.


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Whiskey...Tango...Foxtrot??!!? Why have I never been introduced to chess games like that?? I want that circular board...
 
dougo83 said:
Whiskey...Tango...Foxtrot??!!? Why have I never been introduced to chess games like that?? I want that circular board...
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That specific game is called 3 Man Chess. The board is some kind of foam with laminated surfaces. Pretty fun unless two sides decide to gang up on you.

If it's OK with the mods, there's a link on the following reference page for other variants played on round boards:

http://chessvariants.com/Gindex.html
 
I played in High school (poorly, I was fifth board) I know coach the school's team. But I still play poorly.
Books by Fred Reinfeld are great, you can quite a few from Amazon, used.
Books of Puzzles will also help a lot Polgar has a book with 5334 puzzles.
My favorite book now is "Take and mate"
You can get it on amazon for about $7
 
Sword and Shield said:
Rooks are always in the corners, now there's some odd helmet-shaped piece. Given that the rooks have the normal symbol, wtf is that?
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Ah yes, the helmet-looking one is a jumping piece called the Champion. It can either jump two squares diagonally, or one or two squares orthogonally (up-down/sideways). Ends up being a useful defensive piece.
 
That 3 person chess looks awesome but I'm having a hard enough time with 2 person chess. :D

Btw, Yasser Seirawan is the author I was thinking of. Great books.
 
I love playing Chess and Checkers. I am a high school student and we go to a convention with other schools from the area. Out of like 80 kids I placed 4th in Chess. Out of about 60 I placed 1st in Checkers.
 
i played in torunamnets for a while and i was a club player for soem time.

i can tell you that playing is the oinly thing that will bring skills up; however, you MUST read the theory. the books most recommended for begginer and intermediate players are the following.

these are classics in the field and are read by practically every palyer with a decent skill level. for me (intermediate level club player) the art of attack is the best chess book i have.

i am sorry to tell you that the gimics books are not worth reading. there are no tricks.

you simply need to study the game, understand why things happen on teh board and try them in your own games. attending aclub is useful but the theory is a must.

my guideline is this: for club play and tournaments, to win games, i need to look at the board for 1 hour per day every day. it may be differnet for others who are better than me. :)

anyhow the real deal list is this. belive me, these are not an easy read but they are worth it.

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Attack-Chess-Vladimir-Vukovic/dp/1857444000

http://www.amazon.com/My-System-Cen...1880673851/ref=pd_sim_b_1/175-5918904-2628967

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Chess-Algebraic-Siegbert-Tarrasch/dp/1880673940

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia_of_Chess_Openings

the last link is for teh fritz software. this is what was sued in teh deepp blue computer vs. Kasparov, Kramnik etc. this program really emulates positional play well. its worth the buy in and it is a real professional program with a huge data base of games.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2741
 
I like chess. I mostly use Pogo.com. A while back I found a site where you could play thru e-mail with another person. You could set it up to take days,weeks, or months to make your move. It was cool but I cant find it anymore. By the way ,I Stink and seem to get worse the more I think.
 
gazz98 said:
That 3 person chess looks awesome but I'm having a hard enough time with 2 person chess. :D
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I hear ya there. :(

the lone gunman said:
A while back I found a site where you could play thru e-mail with another person. You could set it up to take days,weeks, or months to make your move. It was cool but I cant find it anymore.
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One alternative to using such services would be to learn a form of algebraic notation for your moves and send them by e-mail. For clarity, the start-end coordinates format is probably best, e.g. 1. e2e4, e7e5 et cetera.
 
gazz98 said:
Btw, Yasser Seirawan is the author I was thinking of. Great books.
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Yep... I've read three of his books in the "Winning Chess" series and they were all really good. Winning Chess Tactics was the best I think. They're all available at Amazon.
 
I used to play chess a bit until I discovered Go.

Unfortunately it's impossible to find any other Go players outside of big cities.
 
Thanks for the book reccomendations guys! I'll check into those. I picked up a couple of solid ones from half price books that I'm working thru. Ones old by ruben fine, another with good basic theory by William hartston.
 
Here's a question or two for those who play (or have played) in small clubs:

On most computer based chess games, I've found the levels to be pretty similar in difficulty. Around level 5 or 6 I probably win about 75% of the time. At what level should someone playing in a club be?

Are the clubs usually pretty laid back/informal?
 
gajinoz said:
I used to play chess a bit until I discovered Go.

Unfortunately it's impossible to find any other Go players outside of big cities.
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Ahh, the elegance of go! Mind you, if you're playing 19x19, you're in for a longer and more involved battle than the average chess game. :eek:

And yes, trying to find other players is a real pain. A female acquaintance said some folk on a local web forum were asking about people interested in playing, but as soon as she relayed that I might be available to play certain days of the week, the thread died. :-/
 
Those 3 & 4 way boards would make for a wild chess game! That would be interesting I bet.

I played at a club for a couple years around 20 years ago. Clubs will be pretty laid back for non-rated games - but if the games are being rated, then not so laid back, at least if you want to win (you have to join the USCF to be rated). If you don't mind losing in 36 moves to a 13 year old kid goofing off & eating potato chips while he's kicking your a$$ (the state champ elementary school team played at my club), then it won't be too stressful.

Big tournaments had cash prizes, & were tough - it is hard work to concentrate (at least as hard as I had to) that hard for 3 days of a tournament. If you can think ahead seeing the best line 8,9,10 or even 11 moves ahead (Kasparov says he thinks ahead 12-14 moves at times), you have a chance at being really good, and it helps if you can memorize thousands of opening variations, and see some possibilities in some of them (if you can do the one, you can probably do the other!).

Back then they were just stating to make good computer chess machines, they had great knowledge of the openings, but were beatable if you could take them to the endgame. Now obviously they are a lot better - I thought it was impossible for Deep Blue (or any computer) to beat the World Champ in my lifetime. I still don't understand how programmers came up with an algorythm to allow a supercomputer to beat the best human. I think they must have taught it how to play chess, and then allowed it to teach itself. None of the programmers or consultants were good enough to beat the champ, so the machine must have taught itself. Kind of discomforting to realize that machines can now not only process information faster, but they can just plain think better too, isn't it?

I think it is like a lot of things, most people can get pretty good if they practice a lot and work hard, but you have to be gifted to even have a chance to become even a master (not to mention Grandmaster). A great game to hone your concentration skills. I don't play much anymore. :eek:

adding a link about big blue vs. kasparov & chess programming
http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathland1.html
 
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