When I go to Chess Club, I like to play everyone else, and not just the adults. Since there are a number of regularly attending teens and pre-teens, last night I found myself playing a girl who was around 13 or 14. (I'm lousy at guessing people's ages. For those that know her, it was the daughter of the club president.) Anyway, fairly early in the game, I had a slight lead of a pawn or two in materiel, and she moved her queen into a square where my knight would have captured it, without me even losing my knight. Because of the nice guy I am, I gave her a chance to take back that move, which she accepted. Then, she won the game (not immediately, of course).
I don't record my games, but I (playing white) had an unusual setup that caused me to castle late on my queen's side. I had most of my power on the king's side, pushed my queen's knight's pawn up a square, and ended up being checkmated in the midgame on those open diagonals with her queen and black bishop.
That's the last time I'll do that!
3 comments:
I don't really know much about chess - I've played a few times, but never enough to get any good at it - which begs this question:
Why the hell did I spend $35.00 on a Bears vs Packers chess set?
Actually, I have a similar story, though not really at all.
I play poker at Scalawag's in Columbus on Sundays. This past Sunday was, apparently, the Daytona 500. This meant there were a lot of people there, including kids. One of these children was an 11-year old nephew of the bar-owner, who was allowed to play in the game.
He played really really well for 11, and he was the last person to go out before the final table. I play every week, and I don't make it that far very often. I have been more lately, but when I first started... It took me two months to make the final table.
11 years old. Sheesh!
When I first saw the subject for this entry, I thought, cool, a post about Alice Cooper. You know, no more Mr. Nice Guy, no more Mr. Cle-ee-ee-ean! If you didn't grow up listening to '70s hard rock, then never mind.
I tend to think it's better for adults to do their best when playing games with children or teenagers, i.e. not "let the kid win". I guess it's a balancing act. On the one hand, there's a lot to learn from playing a game against a better opponent, and you want the young person to benefit from that. But on the other hand, you don't want the young person to get frustrated with the game. I think maybe if you do something that is within the rules of the game but is questionable ethically, then that could cross the line. For example, when my niece was maybe 15 or 16, I played a game of ping pong against her in my parents' basement. I'm certainly not a world-class ping pong player by any means, but I used to have reasonable success at it when playing in college against other college students. When my niece lobbed a ball that just barely made it over the net and bounced high, I did what I was supposed to do -- I blasted the ball into the next county. When my niece complained, I suggested to her that she might not want to lob the ball and have it fall in that location. On the other hand, when my niece was younger, she, my parents, and I would sometimes play Monopoly during the Winter Solstice holidays. Although within the rules, my parents and I would stop my niece from making ridiculous trades, e.g. Boardwalk for Baltic.
Sure, you can blast the ping pong ball into the next county, but if you do it more than once, there's a good chance that your niece will quickly lose interest in playing with you (assuming you are overall a much better player).
In my chess example, I place some value in having it be a "good" game, and not just a game where I win. The way I look at it, I thought I should have been able to win the game without my opponent blundering her way into losing a queen. Since I expected to win, if I'm going to get her queen, I'd want to "earn" it. Sure, there are different levels of play, and I'm nowhere near the top. But at the first level, a "bad move" is where my opponent gives away a piece for free. If I can help her improve as a player and avoid those kinds of mistakes, then that's good.
But not next time....
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