Sunday, May 13, 2007

Computer chess

I admit that I've been a little distracted of late especially since I found out that my new computer has a computer chess program on it. I didn't know it was on there and when I was exploring some of the files on my computer, poof, there it appeared in the games category.
I haven't played chess in a long time. I used to play all the time when I worked at this clothing store in Harvard Square lugging boxes around in the early 1990s. The manager of the store, Dimitri, liked to play, so during lunch hours or when things were super dead, we'd go over to the tobacco shop where they had some tables up in the balcony of the store, and play. He would chain smoke and I would drink juice and enjoy the pipe smoke and hang. Hey, it beat lugging boxes around.
It wasn't like we did it a ton of times but we played enough to get me interested in the game again. And I like playing chess. I'm admittedly lousy at it. I don't learn any of the openings or anything like you're supposed to do. I just move the pieces around on the board and see what I can do without a prepared strategy. Kinda like life. I think that is why Dimitri liked playing with me. I was totally unpredictable at my playing so it would throw him off and he would have to work against the chaos. I would occasionally win. Most often, I would catch him making a stupid move and bam, that was it. The majority of the time, I would say about 80 percent, he would win.
On the computer game, I'm stuck at the 5th level with a 31 percent win/8 percent tie ration, which isn't too bad considering I haven't played in years.
Anyhoo, during most of my down time of late, I've been playing computer chess instead of blogging. I will try and catch up with the blogging later this week.

2 comments:

BCarlson33 said...

I actually went through a computer chess thing a couple of months ago myself, although I only played BattleChess on the Virtual Apple website. I think I was less interested in the whole "exercise for your brain" thing than by the chance to see chess pieces having swordfights with each other in vintage mid 80's graphics! Yeeha!

Tony said...

Hahahaha.
I've seen programs like that but never plunked down the money to get them. :-)
I wish they had a version of the one in the first "Star Wars" movie, where Chewbacca is playing R2-D2, with C-3PO watching, and Han Solo warns the two droids that wookies have been known to pull arms out of sockets!
Good to hear from you, Brady. We should talk sometime soon!