A cool bit of advice for chess players.

This suggestion came from the people who sell Bookup, a chess education program that I don't have, but I'm on their mailing list from way back in the days of DOS.

Do you ever play chess against a computer program? If you do, and you're not an international grandmaster, you've noticed that you cannot beat the program in a fair match. So you select a lower level, maybe a very low level, and then you can sometimes beat the program, but at that level it makes really stupid mistakes. It's frustrating to win that way.

I consider myself an okay chess player. At my peak, I was usually at about the 50th percentile in a casual chess club. On a good day, a little better. But chess programs are so strong that I have to dumb them down pretty far to be able to win half the time.

For a more fun and challenging game, but to still have a chance of winning some of the time, set the program to play at its highest level, give it as much time per move as your patience allows (most programs give you a variety of timing options).

Then give yourself odds of a piece (or more). Use the "set position" option to remove one of the computer's pieces.

The result is a much more fun game. The computer will play a much stronger and more interesting game, and once you've found the appropriate odds, you'll still be able to win some of the time.

Or you can give yourself such good odds that you always win, but what's the fun in that?

 

I stopped playing on-line chess because I was taking it too seriously. Some guy stopped playing, in a game where I thought I was going to win, and never showed up to finish the game, even though the stats showed that he was still active on the site, and it made me really angry. I was getting too upset.

I'll still play a casual over-the-board game whenever the opportunity presents, and I play in a desultory manner against the computer when I want to kill a few minutes, but without taking the time to play my best.

I never use Mac Chess. I don't remember what I disliked about it, but there was something that could not be set how I liked it. Timing? Board look? I don't remember. I have Shredder Chess and I have Sigma Chess 6.1, which is the one I'm using these days. There are not many chess programs for the Mac. I have Fritz Chess for my iPod Touch, but Fritz is not available for the Mac.

Sigma plays very strong chess, has a board look I like, is easy to set timing, and easy to remove pieces for giving myself odds. It's a free program but does not run on OS X 10.7 (Lion) and the guy who wrote it is not going to update it for 10.7.