My chess history
Submitted by
Elwood on Thu, 11/15/2007 at 6:56am.
I wrote this for my profile, but it was too many charachters, so I'm bloggin' it.
My dad started to teach me chess when I was 6(?) I was bad at it and never won a game. I quickly lost interest.
Throughout my child hood I would play my friends ocassionally, but never won (except one flukey smothered mate - a complete accident I assure you).
Later in my teens I became interested again. I got an excalibur chess computer for christmas. I could not beat it on level 1. I was still really bad and still never won a game. Eventually it started to thrash me. I later found out my dad was playing it, and increased the difficulty. I lost interest. The excalibur gathered dust for years.
One day (after I moved out on my own) I dusted it off and lost a few games. This time I played until something clicked. All of a sudden I could beat it! Level 1, 2, 3... I was moving up fast, I skipped from level 15 to 30, then to 50. I was quite impressed with myself (after 27 years without a win). Next I decided to see how I fair against other humans, so I found a local chess club. I learned I was still bad at chess, but I started studying. I kept coming back until I started wining some games.
There was yet another learinig curve before I could beat my dad. I knew he had a chess set & so forth, but I did not know he ever PLAYED chess. When I finally beat him, I was doing well against all but the very best player in the chess club, so I asked dad how he learned chess - I know he did not play much in my lifetime. He finally revealed he was in chess club in highschool. Doh!
That was about 2 years ago. Then my chess kick kind of petered out - for diferent reasons this time.
A friend in my neighborhood recently became interested in chess, so I dusted off my board (again), knocked the cobwebs out of my head, and started to tutor him. I'm not as good as I was when I studied and played more regularly, but I seem to have a knack for coaching chess. Plus it is more fun when you have a chess buddy.
Now I am starting a chess club at work. The club seems to be a great success so far.
I guess the moral of the story is:
If you are not someone like Paul Morphy or Bobby Fisher who can watch one game at the age of 4 then do a 40 game blinefold simul against IMs winning 39 and drawing 1, don't be discuraged. Even if you are loosing, you are learning. Chess can still be fun, it might just take a while before you enjoy the fruits of your labor. Keep playing.
...and have fun.