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In a slightly surreal turn of events, I recently found myself in a chess tournament in a pub; It’s not where you’d ordinarily find chess games taking place - you’d think the alcohol might interfere a little - but take place it did. I actually didn’t play in the tournament; I left that to my colleagues who were a bit less rusty than I (last time I’d played was at least five years ago), so just helped a few folk warm up by being congenial and trying to remember how the pieces moved. Capturing any of their pieces was a rare treat. You could say I focused on the task of drinking beer. Heck, somebody had to do it

My colleagues didn’t do too badly; they certainly didn’t humiliate themselves, although the quiet Hungarian’s who seemed to feature quite largely in the tournament roundly trounced most of the others. In an attempt at making it more fun, they were all playing 15 minute speed chess. Have to say, even 15 minutes is quite a long game in a pub context. One of the chaps I was with started playing 3 minute chess after the last game, which brought the only furrow to the tournament winners brow that I could spot.

So now I’m back in Glasgow, I’ve been minded to read up a bit more on the game and try and dust off my strategy brain. I certainly enjoyed it as a child (first beating your father at things surely features in every childs recollections; I remember doing just that with my parents rather unique chess set that they still have (A hand-made present from my Uncle if I recall).

So a quick google brings up the following useful references:

• Really basic rules, plus some really basic strategy tips (I can safely say I remember these)
• Novice tips
• 101 Chess tips

I’ve already been comprehensively beaten by my computer, but am eyeing up a few of the online chess sites where you get to play other people over whatever period of time you prefer. UChess and letsplaychess.com two that came up from a query and seemed quite interesting.

Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to hold my own, in a pub tournament, some time in the future

This entry was posted on Monday, July 3rd, 2006 at 10:20 pm and is filed under London, Personal, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.