there was a good chunk of time when, after i came home from school and had our familial lunch, my dad and i would play chess. the fragil strands of mememory can't undwind perfect details, but i belive it started when i was nine or ten. most of the time in those early days, he would point out hints, putting his thick fingers on his threatining piece, "watch out," and of course he let me take back my move, keeping my queen alive.
sometime after that, again exactness eludes me, one year, two? i got my first actual... tie. yeah, my dad was tired, wasn't paying attention, and bam, i force the tie. it felt so good. a few weeks later, i got my first bonifide win. priceless. the hints and my takebacks then stopped, and while my father kept winning for a bit, he had to work for it.
and then it happened, slowly of course, but quite definitively... i started to win everytime. it wasn't easy, i had to bust my brain, but sure enough, unless my dad concetrated to a way too intense degree, i would take it. soon after, even if he did concentrate, i would win.
and some days i look back and realize that i owe a tremendous amount of my problem solving skills to that early arrival at the second most complicated game on this planet. if framed my brain to think about the big picture, analyze the situation, and figure out the creative
path to victory. my amazing memory (not always amazing, but usually), my ability to figure things out with very little information (sometimes making me look a bit psychic), my pattern recognition, i owe all this to the game.
but really, i owe it all to an amazing dad who took the time play with me. thanks dad, for the terrific afternoons that made me what i am today.
sometime after that, again exactness eludes me, one year, two? i got my first actual... tie. yeah, my dad was tired, wasn't paying attention, and bam, i force the tie. it felt so good. a few weeks later, i got my first bonifide win. priceless. the hints and my takebacks then stopped, and while my father kept winning for a bit, he had to work for it.
and then it happened, slowly of course, but quite definitively... i started to win everytime. it wasn't easy, i had to bust my brain, but sure enough, unless my dad concetrated to a way too intense degree, i would take it. soon after, even if he did concentrate, i would win.
and some days i look back and realize that i owe a tremendous amount of my problem solving skills to that early arrival at the second most complicated game on this planet. if framed my brain to think about the big picture, analyze the situation, and figure out the creative
path to victory. my amazing memory (not always amazing, but usually), my ability to figure things out with very little information (sometimes making me look a bit psychic), my pattern recognition, i owe all this to the game.
but really, i owe it all to an amazing dad who took the time play with me. thanks dad, for the terrific afternoons that made me what i am today.
posted by El Follador at 11:05 PM
2 Comments:
If chess is the second most complicated game on the planet, what's the first? Cricket?
-tu hermano menor
in the first move of chess, all the pawns can go up one or two squares, and both knights can move to two squares each for a grand total of 20 possible opening moves. as the game continues and the board gets some space, the possibilites climb and climb, but at no point do they match the 200 first possible moves of Go, the japanese stones game, with a 20 by 20 board where you can place a stone on any intersection. In chess, you start with a low number of possibilites, then get to a very high number in the middle, and back to a lower amount in the end. In Go, you start very high, and only minimally lower the amount throughout the game, becomming very low only at the very end.
So i think Go has it, though cricket is just weird, and you were probably not looking for a serious answer.
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