I’d like to get better at Chess. So I looked at some reviews and decided on Lucas Chess… for Linux. I taught my kids how to play when they were young. But I don’t really enjoy playing because I’m slow and tend to overthink moves. Now my adult son is miles ahead of me and he enjoys playing. That’s not giving him credit though. Because I’m no one to be compared to. Probably the solution is just to start playing a lot of game against the computer.
I also enjoy watching Chess matches on YouTube, despite the fact that they move so fast that I really can’t follow what’s going on. I tend to watch lot of females players. Perhaps because my daughter and I watched The Queen’s Gambit (2020) together. The Botez sisters and Anna Cramling are always fun to watch.. Anna has such a sweet personality. But of course I also like to watch Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura who I believe lives in my “neck of the woods”.
I’m also drawn to these e-boards, where you can play on a physical board. They can attach to Lucas Chess or an Smart phone app. Android in my case. Some of them can be quite expensive. This one, called Chessnut Air, seems like a nice choice/price. I find the board and pieces with their wooden appearance attractive. But again… I’m very new to the subject so there may be other great or perhaps better choices.
This book, Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess (1966) is probably a good indication of when I first got interested in chess. I wish I had 50+ years of actual experience. Here’s my copy (it says Bantam edition published 1972)…
Something very interesting while writing this page. I went to search this Log/Blog for “chess” and this page popped up. The funny part is there is no text on that page referencing chess. However there is a picture of a chess game. Hmmm. Very interesting.
I was searching “chess” trying to find if I documented my computer chess competition. Apparently… I didn’t. The story is way back late 70s, early 80s, I decided to pit my TRS-80 playing Sargon chess against the Atari 2600 playing it’s Video Chess game. It was very tedious. I ran, back and forth, from my bedroom where the TRS-80 was to the Florida room (TV room) entering each computer’s move. Nerd alert! The TRS-80 eventually won!
I remember Sargon being a big deal on microcomputers. I remember early talks about if a chess computer could ever beat a master. This article says “in 1980, Sargon on a Z80 microprocessor had a rating of 1736 (that of a very good high-school player) and by 1991 Sargon V on a PC/AT had a rating of 2276 (that of a Master).
It may be interesting to review popular YouTube personality, Derek Banas, who seems to know a lot about a lot of things, because he attempted to see how far/proficient he could get in chess (technically Blitz Chess)… as a older guy. Here is his beginning statement about it. I don’t know why I don’t see his recommendations anymore.