Check-mate

Here it is at nine o’clock in the evening, and ma’lady is out at birthday party for a coworker (but guess whos birthday is tomorrow?). I decided that I would have a few drinks and sit down at the machine to play a few rounds of chess (not that yahoo games nonsense) with a recently added program from Ubisoft called ‘Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition’. By no means do I claim to be remotely skilled at chess, hence the reason I have taken a renewed interest in it as of late. I have been going through a chapter of the learning portion of the software in Josh Waitzkin’s Academy or something titled similarly to that. As of late, chess has become one of those things that I have tried to respark in hopes of honing my decision-making process. About twenty minutes ago, I finally got into the zone, and through some explanations and visualization, the results made me link my life to sixty-four squares in some sort of laid out epiphany that was waiting for me to discover it. I’ve been coasting through the mastery quiz (honing your skills) section. I think it was about the time that he said “It's very easy to get caught up in the meaningless confusions, when playing chess, or dealing with any life issue, for that matter; and the key is to know where to look. When confronted by a tactical position, we should always look for force and continuations, for example checks and captures. So here you want to look for all the checks that are possible. Knight C3 check was a check that also happens to be mate. The idea of this course is to learn the principles that will help you decipher and glide through complicated situations.” It has really made me ponder not just tactical moves within the game, but in reality as well.

*In another note, my latino friends have told me that if I wanted good chess competition, to go down to North Avenue beach and play a homeless person. Apparently, they are genius, but I would pin them up against the seventy to eighty year old Russian and Slovenian men that play up here at Loyola beach anytime.
D.