Having watched all the in-flight movies on local airlines, I've recently started exploring the in-flight games systems. Mostly they're clunky implementations of early arcade games, hobbled by inadequate processors and clunky controls.

So, to wile away the interminable hours between terminals, I've been re-acquainting myself with the game of chess.

Buggered if I can beat the computer though.

I usually get the board set up fairly well in terms of defensive positions. But then I'll make one wrong move, find myself unexpectedly 'forked' into a Hobson's Choice of losing one of two key pieces. And then the game goes to shit from there.

The best I've ever done was stalemate, and even that was a poor outcome given I had the upper hand at the time.

Do any of you play chess? If so, how well do you do against computers?

I still play ocassionally. The computer wins normally, although I have kicked its silicone butt a couple of times.
I remember buying an electronic chess board back in around 1992. That would beat me most of the time for the first few months. then I started to win a few. Then it blew up. Coincidence? I think not.
I think it got scared, real scared.
CHECKMATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fucker.

Used to play a LOT, and had some AI things that I would beat back in the day. It's like any game / skill though, the less you play the worse you get :)

It really depends on the AI / Computer though. Some PC AI Chess games are insane.

In RL i used to
i had a claim of undefeated for about 10 years
one of my friends introduced my to a guy that claimed the same thing, so we had a round
he had me fucked, down to only my king and he had 6 of the best peices left

still to this day i dont know how

STALEMATE motherfucker
so we both retained out claim\title

:)

My kid and I play from time to time - keep a set on the coffee table actually - been a while though - she's a a damned good player 50/50 at best and I've been playing since I was... geez five? That's just a guess, my grandfather taught me so, maybe seven, when I lived with them for a year and more.

Engrossing game, I used to spot her a piece or two - not any more :)

Cheers

I used to be very good at chess. I used to know all the fancy tactics and maneuvers, I used to know how to control the board and how best to make every move work to my advantage.

Now I know nothing. I don't know how that's possible. I can't even remember how taking en passant works.

And now I find playing chess to be incredibly stressful, like no matter what I do, I'm doing it wrong. I don't think I've ever beaten Window's Chess Titans above level 6.

When I was little, I used to play Battle Chess on the Commodore all the time. Shit that was a cool game. I NEVER EVER beat it either. Not even when I tried it again a few years ago. Fucking unbeatable.

Seeing how you guys are more into chess than I thought you might be, I should mention that I met Gary Kasparov briefly a month ago. Very cool guy.

I should also mention that I had a few games on my Android tablet over the past week, on its simplest level. I won two games out of five, but only after 'undoing' a couple of stupid moves, so the wins aren't valid.

Last time I played Chess, was when I was bored with the MacBook prior to getting it dual-booting MacOS X and Linux.

Chess is the only game that MacOS X 10.6 ships with… and the computer mops the floor with me every time. I've gone so rusty on the game it's not funny.

I tend to use Sudoku (KDE variant; or a J2ME midlet on the mobile phone), but lately on the phone I've been fiddling around with a J2ME midlet called MorseTrain that I downloaded and started playing with whilst waiting for Brisbane Area WICEN to rock up at Lake Manchester.

You just reminded me I have several chess games on my ipod that I've probably played all of once. Good thing they were free.

I am really really bad at chess. Which sucks all the harder because I just love chess sets. :P I could get seriously sucked into collecting those things.

I'm with you. My 9 year old Virtuoson is showing interest in the game. I'm mighty tempted to get one of Chris's freestanding decorative table-with-chess-set so we can play against each other in RL.

I just played my PC on beginner mode. The game lasted 6 minutes. I lost.
Looks like I suck a little more than I remember.

I'd like to give you tips on winning, but that would be the blind leading the blind :-)

We need St8smn to tell us how it's done.

At this point I am tempted to try the Kobayashi Maru manoever.

R.O.F.L

I was never really very good - but then I never played much.

The easiest levels on all the computer games always beat me (this was over a decade a go). But recently I played a few games on easy level against the PC on the Windows Vista chess game, and won easily. So they've dumbed them down for me obviously (-:

The problem you're describing only happens with me when I'm tired and don't analyse the potential moves well enough. If I'm on my game, I still lose, but that's because the opposition is a better player who surprises me with subtle tactics.

How do you get really good? I have no idea. Practice I suppose. And then read up on some strategies or tactics.

:) I'll grab a pic when I get a sec Virt, nice set - not quite sure how many times it's been super-glued - fucking cats :)

Cheers

Speaking of chess is it like public domain? Can anyone make and sell their own chess boards and pieces or computer chess games? Or does some company own like the IP?

Heh. It was invented in the 6th Century, long before IP laws were invented :-)

I play Hoyle chess, I usually win more than I lose.

It's gone through a few different versions since then, but I'm pretty sure most of them are still PD :-p

The main game and rules that Europeans play is somewhat younger than the 6th century, but nevertheless old enough to be well outside the range of the longest IP laws :-p

The first few levels of Chess Titans is pretty easy, and you'll win more often than you lose (is that the one in Vista? It's what's in my Win7). Stick it up to about 5-6 though and it starts getting much more difficult.

The way to get better is yeah, obviously practice. I learnt a lot a from Chess books I got from the library. All of a sudden the board looks completely different once you're aware of certain things. Like for instance, the middle four squares. You hold a good amount of them, you hold the board.

I always had something of a talent for it, but never bothered to hone the skill. In the school chess team I was something of a wildcard. Against computers I'd mostly lose against "Hard" and had about 40-60 against "Normal" difficulty. My play style worked much better against humans than machines.

This should put things in perspective (:

http://turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking/chess.html

I enjoy a game of drafts more than chess.

Prettyyyyy!

Awesome.

my last memory of my pop before he died was kicking his ass in a multiple hour game of chess :D i always got love for chess but i doubt ill revisit the passion while im young again :P

I remember playing this when I was at primary school. Myself and a few others realised that on the hardest difficulty the computer made a monumental blunder early on given a certain set of moves that resulted in either the game crashing or the computer losing; can't remember which.

Yeah, if you set it on a difficulty even vaguely high, it would just lock up because it was thinking too hard. Would have a little thinking man statue show up as the CPU player.

Mention of the c64 reminds me of one word.

Archon.

End of thread.

I play Chinese, or Elephant Chess (Xiang Qi) and am not too bad at it. I learned it from a visiting Chinese professor at Griffith Uni more than 10 years ago now, and have kept up study and playing to keep my mind sharp.

To get good at it, you need a structured understanding of game play as well as training in it. My teacher gave me exercises and famous problems from classic Chinese chess texts, and got me to repeat famous games by Chess masters from the 16th-19th century. These games are annotated and preserved in collections that you can buy in books and find freely available on the internet.

I then started getting myself involved with David H Li's excellent syllabus series of books on Chinese Chess, and started teaching myself more of the standard openings and their counters. His methodology of teaching was identical to the Chinese professor's method, so it was a pleasure to have this stuff in written form that I could always refer to.

I started playing against computers several years ago, first with the Zillions of Games one, and once I started beating that regularly (it wasn't terribly strong), I then started playing against the Coffee Chinese Chess java applet which was freely available on Pham Hong Nguyen's (a Vietnamese Australian Chinese Chess expert at Sydney Uni) personal webpage, he wrote his own applet. It was very strong, and I could only beat it on the easiest setting.

So I then bought his Grandmaster level tutorial and teaching program called Saola, which was a whole new world of pain. Holy crap...that is a seriously tough Chinese Chess engine. It purportedly takes you up to a rating 2200+, which is competition grandmaster level.

I have an iPhone ap called Chinese Chess Master which is pretty good, it has a collection of problems I am working my way through, as well as a reasonably strong game engine, although I mainly have it to be able to keep playing and be involved with the game while at work on long shifts, as well as the ability to play against others with the same app, over wifi.

My Taoist teacher up here in Brisbane is also a formidable player. All the Chinese I have spoken with say he's the best. Every year we have visitor Taoist masters come from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines for lectures by him, and after the formalities and lectures are done, socialising always turns to games of Chinese Chess.

I have asked to play against Master Hsu, my Taoist teacher, but he said when I can beat Ah Teck (my brother in law), then I can play him. So when I challenged my bro in law he laughed and said when I can beat Sui Jingli (one of the regular Taoist visitors from Malaysia, I could play him. Geez...so I asked him on his next visit for a game, and he laughed as well, saying if I could beat Jin (my brother-in-law's 18 year old son), then I could challenge him. I got a bit annoyed at getting the run around, and thought they were being assholes (very strange behaviour for members of a Taoist sect lol), however I eventually found out they have a very clear and well-established hierarchy among them, determined solely by who was able to beat who. I felt very sheepish then, realising that yes, it would be rather improper for me, a low level player, to challenge an old experienced player who is basically at grandmaster level.

So I started playing against Jin, my nephew, and was eventually able to beat him. Next time the Taoist visitors came from overseas again for the yearly lectures, my nephew announced to Sui Jingli somewhat formally that he had been defeated by me, and Sui Jingli beamed and said great, lets have a game. All of the visitors thought this was fantastic that a westerner was playing their game, and sat around that evening watching me get soundly defeated 3 games in a row. Sui Jingli smiled and said to me try again next year! Lol

I practiced and the following year when they all returned, we had a match again after the lectures were done, and I managed a win on the last of 3 games. Everyone cheered and slapped me on the back, fuck I felt proud.

Now I could challenge my brother in law, he is a simple man, carpenter by trade, not well educated at all, and can't speak English too well, so I thought how hard can this be? Bam! I was defeated like a noob 3 times in a row. So I am still at the point of trying to win a game against my brother-in-law. I have had him scratching his bald head more than a few times, but he always gets me in the end. They take their game exceedingly seriously and very personally...they never offer tips or advice on how to improve, they just grin and say good game!

There is one Taoist visitor who can beat all the lesser masters he visits with, and he is the only one among them who has won a game against my teacher, Master Hsu. For some reason, this fellow doesn't stick with their little tradition and will happily accept a challenge from me, despite me not having yet beaten my brother-in-law. He is the most annoying opponent I have ever seen and makes me feel like the most complete fool I have ever been. He rarely looks at the chessboard when I play, instead chats non-stop to the other guys around us...it is totally demoralising and soul destroying. Playing against him is exactly like the wall I face when playing the computer on expert level...its like playing a machine.

I found out later that when this fellow once beat my teacher, Master Hsu, my teacher stayed up all night analysing the game in order to work out how he was defeated. My teacher can remember every move he and his opponents played in a game, up to several days afterwards. He doesn't notate the games he plays (that is recording them in a standard chess notation for later reference), but can set up a board at any stage of the game and discuss the moves made. I've seen my brother-in-law Ah Teck, and Master Hsu play many times, and often Ah Teck is stuck and flustered while playing against Master Hsu, just like I felt when playing Ah Teck.

Having discovered all this, I am totally in awe of the power of my Taoist teacher's mind. I just cannot comprehend the mental capacity required to do what he does.

One of my greatest satisfactions was when I taught my then 10 year old son to play, and he defeated one of his Chinese classmates, whose Dad (a friend of the family's and our physician) had in turn taught him to play. His Dad simply looked at me and grinned, never offered a challenge to me, nor have I offered a challenge to him. I think we are both happy to leave the situation between us as it is with our sons.

Sorry for the long rambling post, it sort of got out of hand here. I love Chinese Chess, I think its a brilliant game for so many reasons, and I force myself to keep playing it regularly, even in adversity because it is good for the mind.

Name dropper!

I have chess with friends ... sad story, I cant find too many people to play with anymore :(

I play chess with Gary on my iPhone...when he's out of town that is. Otherwise, I play chess with Gary while shooting bears with our dick bullets.
Did I say bears, I meant polar bears. While I'm drinking martinis on Dick Smith's super motor boat yacht, cruising for great white sharks to arm wrestle. They don't have arms, do they? You know why? Because, when I was a vampire, like a billion years ago, they used to have arms. But I shook hands with every single one of them, trying to make peace. And of course, not knowing my own strength I single handedly turn armed sharks into unarmed sea fish. Fucking pussies. I'll have 'em!

Do you know how hard it is to hold a martini, play chess AND shoot a polar bears with your dick bullets?
No?
Well, just ask my mate Chuck Norris. He'll tell ya!
But, that's a story for another thread.
But fuck it, why not tell you now!
See, there was this one time....hang, incoming call...brb.

I love the game. I've been playing it for years, but when I tried to download copies of the game, it had a few viruses/spyware.

I'd love to download a game which is free of the spyware. If anyone can direct me in the right direction, I'd love for them to tell here or PM me.

http://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/

Thanks, Redhatter. I'll download it when I get home and give it a go.

Thanks for the interesting post Antraman. How does Chinese chess differ to western chess?





Pfft. Gary (or 'Gazza' as I like to call him) melts the core processors of smartphones with his sheer chess playing genius.

But seriously, I'm going to meet him again briefly in September at an event in the middle east. I'm not usually fussed with celebrity souvenirs, but I've been trying to find a big chess piece or something for him to autograph for me because I'm in awe of his intellect and work ethic.

I used to love playing chess and was on the chess club at school. But then.... life went on. I don't think I took it that seriously.

I did enjoy the game though. Especially the PC games like... Chessmaster because it wasn't so power hungry on my crap computer back then. I do occasionally vs the computer on the windows 7 Chess Titans. Got smashed whenever i go above intermediate.

Stress is a pretty big factor of annoyance i find in chess. Every move can mean so much. >_< Mistakes cost dearly.

Chinese Chess has pretty much the same pieces and gameplay except for a few big differences:

A river separates the 2 halves of the board...Elephants cannot cross, but when soldiers (pawns) do, they gain the added direction of sideways movement.

There is a cannon, which takes pieces by jumping over 1 other piece.

The King, and his 2 bodyguards cannot leave a 3x3 square which is his palace.

No castling.

A stalemate is not a draw, but a loss.

A player may not chase, or move the same piece in a series of more than 3 identical moves.

No Queen.

King cannot look at King.

There is an obscure 40 move rule which I would have to look up, but its rarely encountered.

EDIT: Pieces are not shaped like the item they are presenting, but are simply a circular disk with the Chinese character indicating the piece type. This last point really annoys some western players especially International Chess players, but I think its got merits.

It's pretty much chess with extra shit hitting the fan. Great authentic game though.

That is awesome

Last time I played Chess was on a Qantas flight - vs the computer on the medium/normal setting.

I won. Well no...actually I didn't. I Checkmated the AI King and it refused to acknowledge defeat. It just kept 'thinking' - looking for a possible move. There was none. But it just kept processing.
The Cabin Steward came by to collect rubbish and I said "Your Chess game has a bug. It won't let me win. I have it in Checkmate and it has locked up."
He replied "I can reset it for you?"
I think he missed the point.
It was also clear he had no idea how to play Chess since he looked blankly at me when I showed him the screen.

Anyway, I still play Chess from time to time.
I also play Fairy Chess Variants - but only rarely.
I actually ran a PBEM game of "Knightmare Chess" (A Game by Steve Jackson Games) a few years ago.


On the subject of Chinese Chess - anyone ever played Japanese Chess (Shogi)? I have played vs AI and it wiped the floor with me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi

I hear Shogi is the second most difficult and complex board game, after the Chinese game of Go (Wei Qi).

Apparently it has the added dimension of capturing pieces that can then be used on your side.

One is enough for me....I don't think I will try Shogi.

I play a few games a year actually, but i'm far from a good player!

I normally just load up chessmaster (on Grandmaster Level) and then log into Yahoo chess. I pick the guy with the best rating then make his moves on chessmaster and then do chessmasters moves back to him - I always win :).

Why limit yourself to one guy online?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZmpsl3jI0

:)

Go? there's a game to bend your brain - you would not think something seemingly so simple could exceed chess in complexity, but it does, and whoever said draughts, totally agree, nice relaxing game :)

Tell you what my kids loved the most growing up though - Monopoly - guess they're capitalists after all :)

Personally of all the games of the past few decades, and yes, chess long passed into the public domain, I like Trivial Pursuit, but don't exactly play it normal, have four different sets and rotate the boxes :)

Cheers

I like Draughts variants as well.

Oh and as for Monopoly... Jr Monopoly is actually the better game http://www.hasbro.com/shop/details.cfm?gui...&src=endeca
There is also a new version where you build your own board http://www.hasbro.com/shop/details.cfm?gui...78-f898252ad200 which might help players avoid some of the issues with Monopoly.

While we're discussing other board games we all like to play, may I suggest the very superior Carcassonne?

It may have been mentioned already, but if it hasn't I'm happy to be the first. There's a few online java clients, but I recommend grabbing the board game from online or your nearest cool B&M store, or if you have an iDevice, grabbing the brilliant iOS version and I'll whoop your arse at it.

I also play Chess rather frequently, but only against the computer, as when it comes to Chess I am foreveralone.jpg since being a part of both high school and college chess teams...

Thanks for mentioning that game... it has been on my "to do" list for a while.

Can you link to a free version of it - or a site that plays it?

FWIW I sometimes play at http://www.youplay.it/ which has a couple of interesting games.

And, yes, I play Diplomacy as well.

Here is a link to Steve Jackson Games http://www.sjgames.com/ourgames/
There are three chess variants there http://www.sjgames.com/ourgames/chess.html
And as for board games http://www.sjgames.com/ourgames/board.html

Revolution! is one I like the look of http://www.sjgames.com/revolution/
And I have considered PBEMing AGTFOS http://www.sjgames.com/awfulgreen/

http://www.brettspielwelt.de/Spiele/Carcassonne/?nation=en

is your best bet.

If you like what you play, or are even interested in that style of boardgame, look up Settlers of Catan as well.