i’ve been playing a bunch of chess lately and enjoying it quite a bit. looking at my chess.com stats it appears i’ve played a total of 779 games i first started playing chess when i was quite a young kid– I can’t quite remember how exactly I started, but I remember borrowing ‘chess for dummies’ type books from the library, and… wanting to be good at it, but not really for its own sake. i just really liked the idea of being good at chess, more than i actually enjoyed say, really getting into the openings and such. i always liked little puzzles, but i didn’t really have the focus or discipline to really commit to cultivating a broad base of mastery. from there i think my interest ebbed and flowed depending on whether or not i encountered other people who were interested in it. it mostly fizzled by the time i was about 10 and was more interested in video games, anime, basketball, music and girls. but I do remember there was a period of time where a group of friends i hung out with were quite into it, and we would play at the void deck. and we even made friends with a couple of neighbors who saw us playing, and would join us.

at some point i remember thinking, ok, well. i’m never going to be world-class at chess. so why bother with it at all? and i sorta put it aside. but then recently a friend asked me if i’d play with them, and i did, and i had fun doing it, so i realize that that’s all i really need from the experience. i like having some goals and i like getting better at things. I have different elo(?) scores on chess.com and lichess. on chess.com i’m 635 on rapid, and i’d like to climb to 1000. on lichess i’m 1363 on rapid, and i’d like to climb to 1500. but really the main thing i’d like to do is play a hundred games without blundering. i’m reminded of how in 2048, i used to struggle until i realized that i was going about it incoherently– i became far more effective and successful once i realized that you typically lose by accumulating too many 2s and 4s, and so if you simply focus on getting rid of those (by merging them into 8s and 16s and so on), then eventually the 2048 kinda takes care of itself. there’s some secondary details, but you don’t need to worry about those if you can’t manage your 2s and 4s. similarly, in chess– and this is confirmed by grandmasters like GM Finegold– the main thing you need to worry about is developing your pieces and not making any blunders. as long as you avoid making blunders, particularly when playing with weaker players at your level, eventually they will be the one to blunder, and you can capitalize on that. and from there winning isn’t too difficult.

what else is there to say about chess? i like how it provides me with all sorts of metaphors. pins, forks, batteries (as in ‘battering ram’)… it’s a good way to visualize things like tempo– if you attack an enemy piece they might have to divert from their course of action to deal with the threat.

oh, i remember being amused at how… a while ago i tweeted something like, I can’t really take chess or poker too seriously because each game is self-contained and the rules never change, the pieces never change, it’s all ‘closed’, and pretty much every time the winning player is whoever has played and studied more games… the more diligent, persistent, studious person is typically going to win, maybe up until you get to the really exceptional top of the top where you get child prodigies who have been coached from a young age and think and dream in chess etc… but even then, it takes hours. everything takes hours. i’m good with words because i spent a lot of time reading as a kid, and i continue to spend a lot of time reading… though most of my reading lately has been online, from time to time i feel compelled to binge old writing (which you can also find online, eg edgar allen poe’s letters, or more recent-olds like bruce sterling’s 1992 hacker crackdown which is available in its entirety. yesterday i read this ancient egyptian story about an eloquent peasant, which i really enjoyed. mm I think if i practice retelling a bunch of old stories, i might feel more comfortable just… starting in the middle of explaining one of my own stories, and boom, next thing I know I’m in the middle of my own fiction. i’d really like that.

maybe i’ll do a thread about another frame story from the wiki page. it’s really important that i do things that i enjoy. this is always so funny to me, that that’s the answer, because it’s so contrary to what i was told as a kid… so i have to like, reprogram myself. which is scary. i worry about being perceived as arrogant. but look at people like kanye and elon, they seem to be doing fine in their own ways. but that’s not entirely true, is it visa. you know that their relationships suffer and you don’t want your relationships to suffer. so ok the way to deal with that is to be talking with the people you care about. definitely… i think i would be more productive if i spent more time talking to my friends. why am i so shy about this? part of it is the technology? like if i could meet friends in person that would be so much easier but now i have to do zoom calls and shit? yeesh.

but i’ll figure it out

…

2025feb3 the first post I wrote for my 1000×1000words writing project was about ‘gamification’, which was a popular subject in 2012. Don’t hear many people talking about it these days. But it was on my mind then, and it remains on my mind now. Lately I’ve been playing a lot of chess on my phone, even though I’m not very good at it. The chessdotcom app allows you to pick a duration and play against someone of similar skill level to you. I’m not very good at chess, but once you know how to play, it’s a guaranteed interesting experience. You will win or lose or occasionally draw….