He’s only 16, but my daughter told me he’s been playing chess for years and that he’s really good at it.
So we had a game today. His first two moves were right on par…then it all went south.
I beat him in about 2 and a half minutes.
I felt badly for him because he is so young. I won’t play him again. He was quite embarrassed. But that’s chess isn’t it? You never know what’s behind the curtain on the other side of the board.
I used to beat my father easily but one of my uncles was much harder to beat. I haven’t played for over 10 years and forgot it. I play pc video games with friends instead.
I still remember the day I played chess at a family gathering against my older cousin who has aspergers and an IQ of 140+
and when I beat him, the entire room went quiet and people just stared in disbelief
My dad was good at chess. Growing up, starting when I was in second grade, we used to play a couple games every night. I almost never won but when I did, it was very satisfying. It was especially satisfying because a lot of other kids I knew who were taught by their parents, the parents let the kid win. But my dad never let me win on purpose and that made the occasional victory by me special. And it made me better than most other kids I played, even older kids.
In fact, I once won first place in a chess tournament in our school district. The last kid I faced to get the blue ribbon was good. He put up quite a fight.
But yeah @anon39054230, I’ve faced your situation a few time when I was younger. A parent would tell me how great their kid was and within the first two or three minutes he would make some dumb move and I was surprised that he could make such a bad move, and I knew I had him.
It’s kind of sad to me that two of the first things I lost due to schizophrenia was my love of chess and my love of reading. I’ve played chess since I’ve gotten sick but not a lot at all. My last game was probably 20 years ago.
I’ve never really been into chess. I’m mediocre at best. I actually like Chinese checkers or regular checkers. The problem with checkers is it always ends up in a stalemate.
That’s what I thought, but then again I often find higher rated chess problems easier to solve than lower rated ones. I can read without problems advanced philosophy texts but struggle when trying to make sense of an ikea prospectus. We all are a little bit like that.
One of my nieces habitually clobbers me in chess. I remember my last game with my Dad in chess. His mind was going due to cancer but his instincts were still just enough there to defeat me. He did not know he had won and was insulted by the idea of mating between relatives when I said he had me in checkmate. I didn’t mind losing those games.