Chess

A good few kids at the ludoteca are good at chess; and there’s Antonio who’s a right little wizard.  Spurred by the kids’ chess-savviness we started playing chess at home.  There’s a nice wooden chess set and it’s cruel to leave it abandoned on a shelf in the kitchen/dining room accompanied by magazines and books that no-one reads.

I love the game but I never had anyone to play with and I don’t like it enough to practice playing alone.  A good friend back home is too good for either of us to enjoy playing against each other: it’s daunting for me and boring for him.  Charlie’s at a similar level and that makes for enjoyable matches.  Each roughly wins half of the time.  It’s also good to improce

Recently we had a running joke about Dobra’s speed at playing chess: she takes ages.  And patient though I am, it’s not enough to keep my concentration for 3 or 4 hours at a single game!  Eva and Dobra started a game one night and eventually they didn’t finish coz they got tired.  So they made a note of which pieces were left on the board and where to continue at a later stage.  Said later stage came 3 weeks later: last Tuesday.

Spurred by this slow playing Charlie and I decided to start a new practice: 20-minute chess.  The first attempt lasted 21 minutes.  Success!  (Hey, one minute over the stipulated time is not failure.)  Let’s see where it goes from there.  Supposedly it’ll take us to faster thinking, at least on the chessboard.  And maybe eventually I get to beat young Antonio :o)