Last night I was playing chess on the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS), as I have almost every day for, I believe, 12 years. Right now I can't check how long it's been. Ordinarily I'd just go the main console of the Babaschess interface, enter f and my profile would appear, with my overall record for the whole time I've been playing there, my highest official rating, and more info, including the date I joined.
But now when I go to Babaschess, instead of seeing my FICS setup, I see a screen which is grey from edge to edge. I don't know if I did that, or if there's a problem because of the Recent Big Update, or if FICS has closed up shop. I'm pretty sure I did it. More often than I'd like, I unintentionally hit a wrong key and change what's on my PC screen -- the size of a chessboard for example -- and have some difficulty changing it back. Often when I try to change things back I just make things worse.
It's possible that I have that problem unusually severely. That problem, the wetware interface, may be 100% responsible for the grey screen with no controls at my disposal.
I spent some time last night trying to fix my Babaschess connection, then trying to set up another FICs interface, and then I gave up. I said to myself that this could turn out great. For example, I told myself that I could spend all of the time I had spent on chess improving my Latin instead. (It wasn't the first time I had told myself exactly that.) Or maybe I could enjoy chess just by studying chess books.
So this morning, about 5 minutes after I turned on my computer, I looked for other online chess servers, and right away I found Lichess, which I hadn't known existed, and now I play at Lichess. The chess at Lichess is all on the Lichess website, there's no need to a player to set up his or her own interface.
I had been playing at FICS since around 2004, and Lichess launched in 2010, while I was right exactly in the middle of not looking for any other places to play chess.
Maybe I'll actually look around for still other online chess options (this is a very non-autistic thing to say). Maybe FICS is still around and I'll eventually figure out the interface issue. It's not a high-tech issue, or I never would have been able to set up an interface all by myself to begin with, but it's also not as low-tech as playing on Lichess' website. (But even at Lichess, I accidentally made the board much smaller, then somehow made it big again, and haven't figured out how to change its size since then. This is what my life is like.)
Maybe I'll also study those chess books more in addition to playing on line, and also work harder on my Latin, and have a happy well-rounded life. Who knows, maybe I'll even develop friendships to the point where other people, hypothetical future friends of mine, will visit my home and not mind taking a crack at fixing my interfaces and explaining why things suddenly vanish or change because I accidentally hit a key. Maybe they would even know how to change my PC to the point that accidentally hitting a single key would no longer have such disastrous power. It would be a friggin miracle if I could just change some settings so that I can no longer do something I don't want to do by accidentally hitting one key or swiping my mouse incorrectly or whatever the $%#$%#$@#* @#$%^&#$% ^%$# it is.
Maybe -- I have no way of knowing at this moment -- I would learn all about things like that in the first day of a computer class or the first page of a computers-for-dummies type book.
Maybe life will be wonderful even before I become rich and famous. Wouldn't that be weird.
Showing posts with label free internet chess server. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free internet chess server. Show all posts
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
82 Moves -- Few if Any Brilliant Ones
1. e4 c5 2. ♘f3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. ♘xd4 e5 5. ♗b5 ♗d7 6. ♗xd7 ♘xd7 7. ♘f3 ♘gf6 8. ♘c3 a6 9. ♗g5 ♗e7 10. ♘d5 ♘xd5 11. ♗xe7 ♘xe7 12. c4 ♕a5 13. ♘d2 ♘c5 14. O-O ♕c7 15. ♘f3 ♘xe4 16. ♕e2 ♘c5 17. ♘g5 h6 18. ♘f3 O-O-O 19. b4 ♘e6 20. b5 ♘d4 21. ♘xd4 exd4 22. bxa6 b6 23. ♕f3 ♖hf8 24. ♖ac1 ♕c6 25. ♕h3 ♕d7 26. ♕f3 ♕c6 27. ♕h3 ♔b8 28. c5 dxc5 29. ♕g3 ♔a7 30. ♕a3 ♘d5 31. ♖fd1 ♘b4 32. ♕g3 ♘xa6 33. ♕xg7 ♕g6 34. ♕e5 f6 35. ♕e7 ♔b8 36. ♕e6 ♔b7 37. ♖b1 ♘b4 38. ♕e7 ♔c6 39. ♕e6 ♖d6 40. ♕c8 ♔d5 41. ♕xf8 f5 42. ♕a8 ♖c6 43. ♕d8 ♖d6 44. ♕a8 ♖c6 45. ♕a4 f4 46. ♕b3 ♔d6 47. ♕f3 ♘d5 48. ♖e1 ♕f6 49. ♖e2 ♔c7 50. ♖be1 ♕f7 51. ♖e5 ♖d6 52. ♖e8 ♔d7 53. ♖a8 ♘c7 54. ♖a7 ♖c6 55. ♕g4 ♔d8 56. ♕h4 ♖f6 57. ♕h3 ♖f5 58. ♕xh6 ♖h5 59. ♕d6 ♕d7 60. ♕xf4 ♖f5 61. ♕h4 ♔c8 62. ♕h8 ♕d8 63. ♕h3 ♕d7 64. ♕h8 ♕d8 65. ♕h3 ♕d7 66. ♖a3 ♔b7 67. ♖b3 ♖d5 68. ♕f3 ♕c6 69. ♕h3 c4 70. ♖f3 d3 71. ♖d1 d2 72. ♖a3 ♘b5 73. ♕h7 ♖d7 74. ♕h3 ♘xa3 75. ♕xa3 c3 76. h3 c2 77. ♖xd2 ♖xd2 78. ♕e7 ♖d7 79. ♕e2 c1=Q 80. ♔h2 ♕f4 81. g3 ♕ff3 82. ♕f1 ♖d2 0-1 {White resigns}
This afternoon, on the Free Internet Chess Server, I suffered through one of the most tedious, damnably dull chess games of my life. I was rated 1211 going into the game, and my opponent was rated 1109. He or she had set the time setting for the game, 3 12, and I had accepted the seek. 3 12 means that each player starts with 3 minutes on clock, and gains 12 seconds with each move. The clock starts after each player's first move. So on the second move, each player has 3:12, and, for example, if they take 5 seconds to move, their clock goes down to 3:07, then up to 3:19 until their next move. If a player takes 2 minutes to make his second move in a 3 12 and 1 minutes and 12 seconds to make his third move, he will forfeit on time on his third move.
If, on the other hand, each player takes less than twelve seconds per move, if neither player is checkmated or stalemated, and if neither player calls a draw for 3-fold repetition of the same board position or 50 moves without a capture or promotion, and if they build up enough time to take naps when they are tired, or get other players to cover for them while they sleep or do whatever else they have to do, then theoretically the game could last forever,
I don't know how long this game lasted. It felt like forever. I prefer games with no increments: 3 or 5 or 10 minutes or so per side to make all of your moves. That way you know it will end in 6 or 10 or 20 minutes or less. But I sometimes accept seeks for incremental games rather than just wait around for a 5 0 or a 10 0.
In chess, each player begins with 16 pieces. To be sure, some pieces are more powerful than others, but in a good game every piece is important. Generally speaking, all other things being equal, the player who best succeeds at using his pieces in combination and in marshaling all of them into the common cause will have the stronger game. For readers fluent in chess, it will give convey some impression of the nature of this afternoon's game when I say that my opponent, out of 82 moves, moved his Queen 42 times, and put me in check 20 times. As one of the leading chess writers of the past century pointed out, I apologize for not remembering the author and title of the book in question, novice-level players -- that certainly includes me and my opponent here -- often overestimate the importance of check. Check is not checkmate. My opponent checked me 20 times, I checked him 3 times. If the player who put his opponent in check the most times won, my opponent would've scored a rousing victory. But he lost.
A great danger for me in this sort of game is boredom, leading to lack of concentration, leading to blunders and often enough to lost games. It was clear that my opponent, who had manoeuvred his Queen into a position where could check me with it frequently, was going to check me about as many times as he could. 20 times, as it turned out. That's a lot. 42 is an awfully big number of moves for one piece in one game. 82 moves is an awfully long game. In this case, an awfully long, awfully monotonous game. Early on it became clear to me what my opponent was going to do: check me with the Queen relentlessly. There was none of the texture, the drama and surprise that comes from an attack co-ordinated between several pieces. All I had to do was stay awake and fend off one piece until I could find some holes in my opponent's position and exploit them.
I almost didn't. No, I didn't literally fall asleep, but at one point I lost concentration sufficiently to go behind in material.
Several times we had repeated the same board position twice, check with the Queen, evade, check with the Queen from another square, evade, then back to the first one -- once I thought we had a had a three-fold repetition, and I gladly hit the "Draw" button, willingly to lose a point or 2 or 3 in order for this to be over -- but I had been mistaken. And so hitting the "Draw" button didn't result in an automatic draw, but gave my opponent the option to accept a draw, end the game and win a point or 2, or 3. But he kept on.
And finally there was no way for him to keep checking me, I had manoeuvred out of that situation, he could either trade pieces or re-group, and he didn't want to trade pieces, maybe because that would mean no more Queen and hence no more hammer-away-with-the-Queen, and he couldn't regroup, apparently. All he could do was hammer away with the Queen, or quickly die. I'm not a great chess player, far from it, but there is more than one note on my keyboard, so once I silenced his one note, that was that.
So there we were, with his King on the 8th rank behind 3 Pawns on the 7th rank, and me with 3 pawns together in the middle of the board -- because you advance your Pawns, it's one of the basic things you do in chess if you have more than one note -- and enough skill to easily promote one of them, because all 3 were passed: no Pawns were facing them. My opponent floundered, lost material until we were even again, and then it was him with a Queen and Pawns and me with a Queen and a Rook and then with 2 Queens and a Rook, all 3 of them concentrated on the Pawn covering up his King, and he resigned 2 moves before I was going to checkmate him, taking that Pawn with my Rook, then taking his Queen and pinning his King on the edge of the board.
This afternoon, on the Free Internet Chess Server, I suffered through one of the most tedious, damnably dull chess games of my life. I was rated 1211 going into the game, and my opponent was rated 1109. He or she had set the time setting for the game, 3 12, and I had accepted the seek. 3 12 means that each player starts with 3 minutes on clock, and gains 12 seconds with each move. The clock starts after each player's first move. So on the second move, each player has 3:12, and, for example, if they take 5 seconds to move, their clock goes down to 3:07, then up to 3:19 until their next move. If a player takes 2 minutes to make his second move in a 3 12 and 1 minutes and 12 seconds to make his third move, he will forfeit on time on his third move.
If, on the other hand, each player takes less than twelve seconds per move, if neither player is checkmated or stalemated, and if neither player calls a draw for 3-fold repetition of the same board position or 50 moves without a capture or promotion, and if they build up enough time to take naps when they are tired, or get other players to cover for them while they sleep or do whatever else they have to do, then theoretically the game could last forever,
I don't know how long this game lasted. It felt like forever. I prefer games with no increments: 3 or 5 or 10 minutes or so per side to make all of your moves. That way you know it will end in 6 or 10 or 20 minutes or less. But I sometimes accept seeks for incremental games rather than just wait around for a 5 0 or a 10 0.
In chess, each player begins with 16 pieces. To be sure, some pieces are more powerful than others, but in a good game every piece is important. Generally speaking, all other things being equal, the player who best succeeds at using his pieces in combination and in marshaling all of them into the common cause will have the stronger game. For readers fluent in chess, it will give convey some impression of the nature of this afternoon's game when I say that my opponent, out of 82 moves, moved his Queen 42 times, and put me in check 20 times. As one of the leading chess writers of the past century pointed out, I apologize for not remembering the author and title of the book in question, novice-level players -- that certainly includes me and my opponent here -- often overestimate the importance of check. Check is not checkmate. My opponent checked me 20 times, I checked him 3 times. If the player who put his opponent in check the most times won, my opponent would've scored a rousing victory. But he lost.
A great danger for me in this sort of game is boredom, leading to lack of concentration, leading to blunders and often enough to lost games. It was clear that my opponent, who had manoeuvred his Queen into a position where could check me with it frequently, was going to check me about as many times as he could. 20 times, as it turned out. That's a lot. 42 is an awfully big number of moves for one piece in one game. 82 moves is an awfully long game. In this case, an awfully long, awfully monotonous game. Early on it became clear to me what my opponent was going to do: check me with the Queen relentlessly. There was none of the texture, the drama and surprise that comes from an attack co-ordinated between several pieces. All I had to do was stay awake and fend off one piece until I could find some holes in my opponent's position and exploit them.
I almost didn't. No, I didn't literally fall asleep, but at one point I lost concentration sufficiently to go behind in material.
Several times we had repeated the same board position twice, check with the Queen, evade, check with the Queen from another square, evade, then back to the first one -- once I thought we had a had a three-fold repetition, and I gladly hit the "Draw" button, willingly to lose a point or 2 or 3 in order for this to be over -- but I had been mistaken. And so hitting the "Draw" button didn't result in an automatic draw, but gave my opponent the option to accept a draw, end the game and win a point or 2, or 3. But he kept on.
And finally there was no way for him to keep checking me, I had manoeuvred out of that situation, he could either trade pieces or re-group, and he didn't want to trade pieces, maybe because that would mean no more Queen and hence no more hammer-away-with-the-Queen, and he couldn't regroup, apparently. All he could do was hammer away with the Queen, or quickly die. I'm not a great chess player, far from it, but there is more than one note on my keyboard, so once I silenced his one note, that was that.
So there we were, with his King on the 8th rank behind 3 Pawns on the 7th rank, and me with 3 pawns together in the middle of the board -- because you advance your Pawns, it's one of the basic things you do in chess if you have more than one note -- and enough skill to easily promote one of them, because all 3 were passed: no Pawns were facing them. My opponent floundered, lost material until we were even again, and then it was him with a Queen and Pawns and me with a Queen and a Rook and then with 2 Queens and a Rook, all 3 of them concentrated on the Pawn covering up his King, and he resigned 2 moves before I was going to checkmate him, taking that Pawn with my Rook, then taking his Queen and pinning his King on the edge of the board.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Chess Log
Sometimes I jot down some notes about the blitz games I play at the Free Internet Chess Server. Sometimes I write things during the games. That's very unusual, because after all these are blitz games, blitz as in 10 minutes a side or less to make all the moves you're going to make in the game, blitz as in hurry up. In anything like an evenly-matched game there is no time to write things. Every second not spent concentrating on the board is a significant gift to one's opponent.
Sometimes, however, even in a blitz game, the situation is so lopsided, and my opponent is taking so much time between moves, that I have to find some way of entertaining myself, and I jot things as I wait for my turn to move:
October 16
Waiting for Player A (rated 662) (I think some players might not like it if I wrote about them using their actual online handles so it's just going to be Player A, Player B and so forth) to move. I'm rated 1165, and this game is Ugh-LEE.
Player A has moved a few times since I wrote that, but time continues to be one of his big problems in this game. I'm at 7:02 in a 10 0 blitz, and Player A is 1:20 -- hey he just moved!
He forfeited on time with 5:32 left on my clock. So Ugh-LEE in so many ways, this game!
Waiting for Computer A (rated 816) to move. 2nd straight game against this computer. It resigned the 1st game, while I was being very careful, with 2 Queens, not to end the game in a stalemate.
Yes, Computer A is playing very -- I was about write "very badly" when it checkmated me. Effing Doofack!
Despite the frequency with which it happens in movies and sitcoms, if someone checkmates you in real life when before that move you thought you were playing well, you were playing extraordinarily badly. Checkmate usually comes gradually over a number of moves, gradually and painfully obviously. Most top-level games which aren't draws end with a resignation many moves before a checkmate would've come.
I played chess very badly this evening. Meanwhile, in a case of chess Charles Atlas, Player B, whom I was used to seeing with a rating under 1100, is now about halfway between 1200 and 1300. It's unusual to improve that much after having played a long time at that level -- in fact Player B and I are the only two players I know personally who've done it, so good for us both.
October 17
Chess is starting out well this morning: a draw against Player C (1365) and a win against Player D (1209). When I had 48 seconds left, Player E (1123) let her clock run down from around 1:25 to 1:06 and then resigned, thank you very much Player E!
When it rains it pours: Player F (1148) resigned from what looked to me like a very good position. I'm up 30 points, 1133 to 1163, in about an hour.
And another one bites the dust: Player G (1269) resigns after 10 moves, not entirely without reason. Played like a beginner but he or she has thousands of games on FICS.
And a draw against Player H (1319).
Okay, I think I'll take a break now, take my 43 points and run. 4 wins and 2 draws in 6 games this morning, the 2 draws against players rated over 1300, the wins against players rated between 1123 and 1269.
How much of my success when I'm successful has to do with simple determination and concentration?
Afternoon chess: an Ugh-LEE 19-move beatdown of Player I (1099). A merciless spanking of Player J (1055).
I got way ahead of myself: almost before the game began, I thought up an epitaph for the wrong player: "Player K tastes the pain." But no. I tasted it. And I don't like it! Concentration and determination are key to chess, but my greatest nemesis continues to be over-confidence.
Sometimes, however, even in a blitz game, the situation is so lopsided, and my opponent is taking so much time between moves, that I have to find some way of entertaining myself, and I jot things as I wait for my turn to move:
October 16
Waiting for Player A (rated 662) (I think some players might not like it if I wrote about them using their actual online handles so it's just going to be Player A, Player B and so forth) to move. I'm rated 1165, and this game is Ugh-LEE.
Player A has moved a few times since I wrote that, but time continues to be one of his big problems in this game. I'm at 7:02 in a 10 0 blitz, and Player A is 1:20 -- hey he just moved!
He forfeited on time with 5:32 left on my clock. So Ugh-LEE in so many ways, this game!
Waiting for Computer A (rated 816) to move. 2nd straight game against this computer. It resigned the 1st game, while I was being very careful, with 2 Queens, not to end the game in a stalemate.
Yes, Computer A is playing very -- I was about write "very badly" when it checkmated me. Effing Doofack!
Despite the frequency with which it happens in movies and sitcoms, if someone checkmates you in real life when before that move you thought you were playing well, you were playing extraordinarily badly. Checkmate usually comes gradually over a number of moves, gradually and painfully obviously. Most top-level games which aren't draws end with a resignation many moves before a checkmate would've come.
I played chess very badly this evening. Meanwhile, in a case of chess Charles Atlas, Player B, whom I was used to seeing with a rating under 1100, is now about halfway between 1200 and 1300. It's unusual to improve that much after having played a long time at that level -- in fact Player B and I are the only two players I know personally who've done it, so good for us both.
October 17
Chess is starting out well this morning: a draw against Player C (1365) and a win against Player D (1209). When I had 48 seconds left, Player E (1123) let her clock run down from around 1:25 to 1:06 and then resigned, thank you very much Player E!
When it rains it pours: Player F (1148) resigned from what looked to me like a very good position. I'm up 30 points, 1133 to 1163, in about an hour.
And another one bites the dust: Player G (1269) resigns after 10 moves, not entirely without reason. Played like a beginner but he or she has thousands of games on FICS.
And a draw against Player H (1319).
Okay, I think I'll take a break now, take my 43 points and run. 4 wins and 2 draws in 6 games this morning, the 2 draws against players rated over 1300, the wins against players rated between 1123 and 1269.
How much of my success when I'm successful has to do with simple determination and concentration?
Afternoon chess: an Ugh-LEE 19-move beatdown of Player I (1099). A merciless spanking of Player J (1055).
I got way ahead of myself: almost before the game began, I thought up an epitaph for the wrong player: "Player K tastes the pain." But no. I tasted it. And I don't like it! Concentration and determination are key to chess, but my greatest nemesis continues to be over-confidence.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Chess and Vanity
They cancel each other out: if you're vain about your chess abilities, they'll never advance very far, and if you're playing good chess, it means that, at least when it comes to the moves you've made in the game -- typically each player will move somewhere between 20 and 60 times in a game -- you're not kidding yourself, you're not dreaming, you're paying attention to the 64 squares in front of you and the 32 or fewer pieces on them. There are no grey areas, no room for subjective interpretation when it comes to the result of a game: you either win, lose or draw. This is perhaps even more clearly the case when you're playing chess against a computer program, or playing over the Internet with software which automatically detects game results and disallows moves which are against the rules and so forth.
One of the best chess players I've known personally once remarked that chess is a game of mistakes. (He was probably about a 2000-level player. I say probably because he had stopped playing in rated tournaments.) This seems to be true. What separates high level play from novices is the infrequency and subtlety of mistakes, but at any level, the player who wins, assuming my friend's remark was correct -- his level of chess is so far above mine, 800 or 900 points above, that I have to take his word about the nature of the game up there. I don't grasp it myself, not at all -- is the one who goofs the least often, who notices most often when his opponent goofs and who takes the best advantage of his opponent's mistakes. At my level blunders -- say, for instance, the opportunity to capture a piece without giving up any positional strength, or even the opportunity to checkmate the opponent right away -- sometimes go unnoticed for several moves.
In Internet chess, which is the type of chess I play most of the time these days, there is an additional type of mistake which can be made: the mouse slip. You meant to move a piece to a certain square, but your hand slipped on the mouse and the piece ended up somewhere else. Typically on Internet chess sites there is the possibility to give the opponent the opportunity to take back a move. On the site where I play, I've disabled this option. No takey-backies when you play me. If my hand slips when I'm moving, I live with the result. If you tell me your hand slipped -- well, for one thing, I wonder whether you're lying, and it wasn't your hand but your mind that slipped. And anyway, chances are I won't notice you trying to tell me anything during the game: I expand the chessboard to full-screen so that it covers the entire entire console where messages are exchanged. I didn't come to the website to chat, and I certainly don't want to talk during a game: feeble as my efforts are, they're the result of my attempt to concentrate fully on the game at hand. If I shrink the board so that I can see the console where players send messages, it's because my opponent hasn't moved in quite a while and I've become bored while waiting. If I see a private message to me from my opponent claiming that he had a mouse slip -- they're in bright yellow, they stand out from the steady stream of public messages -- I don't reply. Because I don't know any polite way to say: I don't care. Your mistakes are your responsibility. Mouse slips are an ever-present possibility in Internet chess. You ought to watch out for that.
There are currently over 20,000 rated players on FICS the site where I play. About four-fifths of them are better than I am. The result of every rated game affects both players ratings: if their rating are very close going in, and one player wins, the winner has 8 points added to his rating, and the loser drops 8 points. (On Blitz games, anyway, which include almost all the games I play there. Blitz means that each player has a total of between 3 and 15 minutes to make all of his moves, or he forfeits the game on time. Or there is incremental time-keeping which is reckoned to be equivalent: 2 minutes a side, for example, plus 12 seconds added every time you move. I don't like the incremental timekeeping, I've pretty much stopped playing games timed that way. On the website you can also play lightning games, with less time than blitz games, and standard games, with more time than blitz.) If the game is a draw, each player's rating stays the same. If the players' rating are mismatched, the higher player will win less than 8 points by winning and lose than 8 by losing the game, and in the event of a draw he will lose a couple of points, and the lower-ranked player stands to gain more and lose less. I've played a bunch of games there, and my rating -- that is, my Blitz rating. Most of the games played there are blitz games -- is currently 1130-something. Occasionally I've dropped lower than 1000 and risen higher than 1200. 1300 seems lie a beautiful grail to me. So, I'm not very good at all.
And I make no excuses about it. 16,000 or so players are rated above me in blitz chess on FICS. That means they're playing better chess than I, no more, no less. I make no excuses, and I have no interest in the excuses other players make. Your mouse slipped? Bummer. Your boss busted you and you want to adjourn the game? That sort of thing's gonna hurt your rating, Sparky. You didn't mean to move there? I know the feeling, it sucks.
There are some players, playing in cyberspace and also in 3-D, in the meat world, who give and take takebacks all the time, routinely. It doesn't seem to me that they're really playing chess. Seems to me they're refusing to learn how to play it for realsies. In baseball, or even in the most casual slow-pitch softball game, you don't get do-overs because your hand slipped on the bat or because you missed a fly ball because the sun was in your eyes.
So what's my point, anyway? I'm not sure. I think it may be just that a lot of life is very murky and uncertain and subjective and mysterious, and that chess may be comforting because it can be a complete contrast to all of that, even if it is only a meaningless game played for no stakes other than for its own sake.
PS, 28. August 2012: I've been getting a little better: my current rating is 1263, and my best is 1329, which I reached on 2. April 2012. (And FICS continues to grow and improve, 1329 represents a higher level of play in 2012 than it did in 2009, just as it would in the world of tournaments.) Now 1400 and beyond is the possible-seeming grail.
One of the best chess players I've known personally once remarked that chess is a game of mistakes. (He was probably about a 2000-level player. I say probably because he had stopped playing in rated tournaments.) This seems to be true. What separates high level play from novices is the infrequency and subtlety of mistakes, but at any level, the player who wins, assuming my friend's remark was correct -- his level of chess is so far above mine, 800 or 900 points above, that I have to take his word about the nature of the game up there. I don't grasp it myself, not at all -- is the one who goofs the least often, who notices most often when his opponent goofs and who takes the best advantage of his opponent's mistakes. At my level blunders -- say, for instance, the opportunity to capture a piece without giving up any positional strength, or even the opportunity to checkmate the opponent right away -- sometimes go unnoticed for several moves.
In Internet chess, which is the type of chess I play most of the time these days, there is an additional type of mistake which can be made: the mouse slip. You meant to move a piece to a certain square, but your hand slipped on the mouse and the piece ended up somewhere else. Typically on Internet chess sites there is the possibility to give the opponent the opportunity to take back a move. On the site where I play, I've disabled this option. No takey-backies when you play me. If my hand slips when I'm moving, I live with the result. If you tell me your hand slipped -- well, for one thing, I wonder whether you're lying, and it wasn't your hand but your mind that slipped. And anyway, chances are I won't notice you trying to tell me anything during the game: I expand the chessboard to full-screen so that it covers the entire entire console where messages are exchanged. I didn't come to the website to chat, and I certainly don't want to talk during a game: feeble as my efforts are, they're the result of my attempt to concentrate fully on the game at hand. If I shrink the board so that I can see the console where players send messages, it's because my opponent hasn't moved in quite a while and I've become bored while waiting. If I see a private message to me from my opponent claiming that he had a mouse slip -- they're in bright yellow, they stand out from the steady stream of public messages -- I don't reply. Because I don't know any polite way to say: I don't care. Your mistakes are your responsibility. Mouse slips are an ever-present possibility in Internet chess. You ought to watch out for that.
There are currently over 20,000 rated players on FICS the site where I play. About four-fifths of them are better than I am. The result of every rated game affects both players ratings: if their rating are very close going in, and one player wins, the winner has 8 points added to his rating, and the loser drops 8 points. (On Blitz games, anyway, which include almost all the games I play there. Blitz means that each player has a total of between 3 and 15 minutes to make all of his moves, or he forfeits the game on time. Or there is incremental time-keeping which is reckoned to be equivalent: 2 minutes a side, for example, plus 12 seconds added every time you move. I don't like the incremental timekeeping, I've pretty much stopped playing games timed that way. On the website you can also play lightning games, with less time than blitz games, and standard games, with more time than blitz.) If the game is a draw, each player's rating stays the same. If the players' rating are mismatched, the higher player will win less than 8 points by winning and lose than 8 by losing the game, and in the event of a draw he will lose a couple of points, and the lower-ranked player stands to gain more and lose less. I've played a bunch of games there, and my rating -- that is, my Blitz rating. Most of the games played there are blitz games -- is currently 1130-something. Occasionally I've dropped lower than 1000 and risen higher than 1200. 1300 seems lie a beautiful grail to me. So, I'm not very good at all.
And I make no excuses about it. 16,000 or so players are rated above me in blitz chess on FICS. That means they're playing better chess than I, no more, no less. I make no excuses, and I have no interest in the excuses other players make. Your mouse slipped? Bummer. Your boss busted you and you want to adjourn the game? That sort of thing's gonna hurt your rating, Sparky. You didn't mean to move there? I know the feeling, it sucks.
There are some players, playing in cyberspace and also in 3-D, in the meat world, who give and take takebacks all the time, routinely. It doesn't seem to me that they're really playing chess. Seems to me they're refusing to learn how to play it for realsies. In baseball, or even in the most casual slow-pitch softball game, you don't get do-overs because your hand slipped on the bat or because you missed a fly ball because the sun was in your eyes.
So what's my point, anyway? I'm not sure. I think it may be just that a lot of life is very murky and uncertain and subjective and mysterious, and that chess may be comforting because it can be a complete contrast to all of that, even if it is only a meaningless game played for no stakes other than for its own sake.
PS, 28. August 2012: I've been getting a little better: my current rating is 1263, and my best is 1329, which I reached on 2. April 2012. (And FICS continues to grow and improve, 1329 represents a higher level of play in 2012 than it did in 2009, just as it would in the world of tournaments.) Now 1400 and beyond is the possible-seeming grail.
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