Who else likes chess?

Post Reply New Topic

Well, on second thought, my luck may be changing. I just now beat a player who was 190 points higher rated than me. Thrashed him throughout the entire game. (Finally back-row-mated him.)

I do fairly well at chess, so long as I'm not on a timer. I got kind of burned out on it in high school, since I went to an alternative school and being good at chess was like being on the varsity football team at a regular school there. As soon as you got a reputation for being good at chess, you'd be very aggressively challenged quite often in the lounge area between classes, and it seemed like the people there viewed a chess game almost like some sort of competitive IQ test. Aspie that I am, after a few such encounters I simply refused to play anymore, which really pissed off the chess cognoscenti at school, since to them it meant they couldn't claim to have beaten me at chess and thus couldn't claim intellectual superiority. It's kind of ironic really, that when you take the jock element out of high school that something like chess would step into the void and take it's place, that having the nerds as the top of the social order wasn't any better than the athletes.

Just as an aside, jrobi is a hack. His lessons are all so useless, and his analysis is bad enough that it actually makes me burst out laughing at points.


I think I would actually have liked to go to such a school- I've enough drive to be the alpha nerd that I probably would have thrived there. At my school, there were very few people who were willing to play chess, and the only one who was a real challenge simply refused to play against me most of the time, preferring to play against much weaker opponents he wouldn't risk losing to. This was frustrating, because we were first and second boards on the team, and he simply refused to play the challenge for his board, while I spent every practice defending my own board against the 3rd board player- I racked up a 9 game winning streak and insisted that I was done being challenged by him.

I think having the nerds at the top of the social order would have been a lot better than the athletes, because that would mean I'd get to be at the top.

I played chess today. I don't play it often but I don't think the guy I was playing does either but in the first game I got checkmated after like 3 moves I think. The second game I lost too.

Chess is a game that it's assumed someone with the sort of brain I have must necessarily be good at. Things like attention to detail, spatial skill and a logical mind are possible advantages to AS playing chess. OTOH, possible disadvantages to AS playing chess are a less well developed theory of mind - e.g. anticipating what the other player is thinking and what move they are going to make, and possibly difficulty in planning well ahead which is necessary for success playing chess; and depending on the individual, mental overload and getting bogged down in the detail of the many permutations every chess move brings.

Well, as long as you are playing a solid game, it doesn't matter that much what your opponent may be thinking. A solid game means looking at everything to the point where you understand that your pieces are in a strong position, so that whatever trick the opponent may have in mind won't get very far, to the extent that you've anticipated every move he can make already, and have more or less prepared for it.

Last edited by Ragtime on 08 Dec 2008, 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It seems to be an NT requirement, regardless of what axis superiority rotates upon, that some form of hierarchy must be established, that the idea of all people actually being equal is somehow an intrinsically flawed concept... The axis of supremacy always seems to be aligned with the majority population of the school. In most schools, it's physical prowess in the form of how well one plays football.

In my case, I went to a high school that was in a 2 school regional HS district. The other school in the district happened to be the one with the overfunded athletic program, so all the athletes in the 3 towns of the district went to that school, while more nerdy types ended up going to the school I went to. It was common for our varsity football team (such that it was) to be found playing Halo 2 (the current Halo at the time) in the senior commons rather than working out as the stereotypical jock would be. Where I went, social supremacy belonged to the best FPS gamers and SSBM players, which meant that I was usually an outcast, although I eventually got good enough in SSBM playing Mr. Game & Watch to actually become one of the most popular people in the school...

Anyway, it's really more about which regime is in power. Since nerds (including all forms of nerdism, from gamers to computer wizards to drama nerds) were actually a majority (or at least a plurality), nerd hierarchy tended to dominate. The class president for my class all 4 years owned and operated a personal website that became popular with the students during his time there.

One interesting thing about a nerd regime in power in a public high school, however, was the fact that nerds, having great variations in discipline between them (like computer or drama), tend to be a little more inclusive to others, and thus almost everyone, regardless of nerd status, tended to adopt some nerd tendencies (mostly among the gamer discipline), and thus because almost everyone in the school was, to some extent, a nerd, cliques tended to be non-existent. Despite our student body of about 900~1000, everybody knew everybody, and except for a few troublemakers, the entire student body tended to be supportive of one another (although I didn't realize this until after I graduated).

One prime example was when we had a principal that was quite popular among the students (in addition to being really good at the principal's job) was going to be let go before he achieved tenure by the regional school board (which was dominated by the other, more athletic school in the district) since under his leadership, our school began to excel over the other one in basically every area (even beating them at our annual thanksgiving football game when I was a sophomore). When the School Board decided to not renew his contract, the entire student body and their parents showed up at the next board meeting in protest. A later demonstration by the student body garnered attention from the local network channels. After the school board let him go anyway over these protests, the next school board elections swept a few long-time members of the Board out of office, while the principal was picked up by another school district in the area 3 days after he was let go.

I like to think about chess, though I don`t really play it much.

I'm surprised that there seem to be so few Aspies into chess.
I wish I could play some people I know on FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) (http://www.freechess.org.
Still haven't gotten a chance to play Orwell, but he'll beat me anyway.
My wife was going to buy me a neat chess set for Christmas, but I told her
I don't know anyone personally who likes to play chess, so the board would go unused.

(Ok, I'm being a bit dramatic. )

Any time after December 20th I'll be free- school gets a break then.

I went a long time with no chess set- when I played, it was online or at my school chess club which had sets, so why did I need one? Besides, I prefer playing with no board at all- blindfold chess is much more fun, it adds an extra layer of challenge and forces you to keep a higher level of mental focus. Also, playing blindfold allows me to avoid the annoyances that come from sloppy piece placement (such as putting pieces off-center in their squares) and disagreements over which way the knights should face. Incidentally, proper placement for knights is facing left (from my perspective). Having them face to the right is just wrong, and making both face inwards is an abomination. Both outwards is a crime against nature that only a severely depraved monster would even consider. If both players can not agree on the knights facing to my left, facing forward is an acceptable compromise. And bishops should have the little notches in their heads pointed towards their owner. Always. On that, there is no room for compromise.

Let's play unrated, ok Alpha-nerd? (Referrence to your statement about your demeanor toward others when it comes to chess.)

I'm currently in the process of carefully nuturing my standard rating upwards, and playing you rated would be a step backwards regarding that goal. Right now, I'm only playing rated games with players who are even with me.

FreeChess is awesome, thanks for that.

Anyone ever just tune out of a chess game you're in the middle of playing? My ADHD kicks in frequently, so that I can't concentrate. Worse, I often get ambivalent about the result of game right in the middle of it. It just becomes an annoyance, like a gnat I can shut a door on by resigning. But my mind just starts wandering onto other topics while I'll playing.
I guess I'm just getting bored with chess. That's the best way to beat an ADHDer at chess: make a succession of the most boring moves you can, and take 30 seconds - 1 minute for each one.

Yeah, that happens to me a lot. I just lack the mental discipline to keep my game up at a reasonable level- on the black side of the Semi-Slav Noteboom, I can always get a much better position. It might not be a forced win for black, but it's close and white has to do some amazing stuff to hold the draw against a decent black player. Yet every time I play this variation, I end up blundering in the middle game and losing. There have been enough times when I've gotten bored of a game and just resigned to avoid having to play it out. Also, I tried playing a game earlier today while under the effects of severe sleep deprivation- not a good idea. I was dozing off every other move or so. After getting up two pawns, I managed to lose the endgame.

Oh and Ragtime, I'm on break now. Anytime you want to play on FICS, I will probably be around. Same goes for anyone else looking for some chess- look up user offtherook on FICS. I'm on a lousy losing streak at the moment.

Ugh, chess is so BOR-RING! Even just 1 game per day puts me to sleep!

No wonder so few Aspies are into it.

Ok, turns out I can play chess well, and enjoy the game whether I win or lose, but only on certain days.
Most of the time, thinking out move combinations is drudgery, but sometimes I'm fluent in it and enjoy it.
I guess chess isn't going to be the Aspie obession I thought it would be, but I can still enjoy it once in a while.

Yay, I got a chess set for christmas, I guess I will vs by brother every so often. He usualy wins, as he spends more time thinking his moves. I prefer just to try a bit of action with the moves, no fun just thinking, need a bit of excitment, I realy hate it when he spends lots of time, or he then decides to have the nerve to say "I ment to go there".