Results 1 to 12 of 12

Thread: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

  1. #1
    Senior Member Kaputnik's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    By the long tidal river.
    Posts
    1,043
    Thanks
    2,713
    Thanked 2,570 Times in 695 Posts
    Rep Power
    14

    Default A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    I don't expect everyone here to share my interest in chess, but I'll try to make this as generally relatable as I can.

    I don't play in as many chess tournaments as I used to in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. In fact, I did not play at all, except for online correspondence games, between about 2004 and 2017, for reasons of "life getting in the way". Since then, I've tried to get in a few major tournaments a year, which generally involved traveling to another town for a few days, and staying in a hotel. Some tournaments, such as the World Open in Philadelphia, can have hundreds of players, although not all in the same section. As you can imagine, those kind of events have mostly been canceled since fairly early this year. And our local chess club, which met at a public library, does not expect to resume before April or May at the earliest.

    Many of the major tournaments have moved online for now. I've played in the Pittsburgh and Chicago Opens from my living room in Connecticut, and have signed up for another one that would normally be played in a suburb of Cincinnati. There are a number of issues with online play which I won't get into here, but sitting staring at a computer screen for hours is somehow less satisfying that sitting in a hotel ballroom staring at a real tournament sized set for hours. Although many would prefer to do neither, I'm sure.

    Anyway, I was recently reminded of a particular historical game which I wanted to look up out of sheer curiosity. A modern way to do that would have been to run a search in a chess database program (SCID in my case, since I don't have a Windows computer). Or if I wanted to play through a game from a book, then to use a computer or tablet app instead of a real chess set.

    Instead, I unpacked one of my tournament sets, moving aside the smaller one which is more practical for just playing through games on a normally sized table. I got out my Dover reprint of Morphy's Games of Chess, by Philip W. Sergeant, a reprint of a book from 1915. For added old-fashioned-ness, the book is in English descriptive notation, now largely supplanted by algebraic, and a fairly old-fashioned type of descriptive at that.

    There is no earthly reason to set up a chess clock to play through a game, but I wanted to check the battery. Yes, that's it.

    ,
    Last edited by Kaputnik; October 29th, 2020 at 11:35 AM.
    "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
    G.K. Chesterton

  2. The Following 11 Users Say Thank You to Kaputnik For This Useful Post:

    + Show/Hide list of the thanked

    azkid (October 30th, 2020), BlkWhiteFilmPix (October 31st, 2020), Chrissy (October 29th, 2020), digitalsedition (October 29th, 2020), Empty_of_Clouds (October 29th, 2020), Jon Szanto (October 29th, 2020), manoeuver (October 29th, 2020), NumberSix (November 9th, 2020), penwash (October 29th, 2020), Pterodactylus (October 30th, 2020), silverlifter (October 29th, 2020)

  3. #2
    Senior Member silverlifter's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2018
    Posts
    616
    Thanks
    359
    Thanked 772 Times in 355 Posts
    Rep Power
    6

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    Knight takes book?
    Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

  4. The Following User Says Thank You to silverlifter For This Useful Post:

    manoeuver (October 29th, 2020)

  5. #3
    Senior Member manoeuver's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2012
    Location
    Near Midwest, US
    Posts
    1,594
    Thanks
    1,227
    Thanked 1,081 Times in 555 Posts
    Rep Power
    15

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    well, that's delightful!

  6. #4
    Senior Member Jon Szanto's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    6,616
    Thanks
    7,795
    Thanked 11,039 Times in 4,010 Posts
    Rep Power
    22

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    Totally works for me, from an inspirational and executional standpoint. You wanted to do something and you did it in a very appropriate manner. I like that.
    "When Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick;
    and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter."

    ~ Benjamin Franklin

  7. The Following User Says Thank You to Jon Szanto For This Useful Post:

    manoeuver (October 29th, 2020)

  8. #5
    Senior Member FredRydr's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2012
    Location
    Carlisle, Pennsylvania USA
    Posts
    4,907
    Thanks
    1,396
    Thanked 6,390 Times in 2,505 Posts
    Rep Power
    18

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaputnik View Post
    ...There is no earthly reason to set up a chess clock to play through a game, but I wanted to check the battery. Yes, that's it.
    I expect there are analog wind-up versions on eBay to match your pens.

  9. #6
    Senior Member Kaputnik's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    By the long tidal river.
    Posts
    1,043
    Thanks
    2,713
    Thanked 2,570 Times in 695 Posts
    Rep Power
    14

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    Quote Originally Posted by FredRydr View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaputnik View Post
    ...There is no earthly reason to set up a chess clock to play through a game, but I wanted to check the battery. Yes, that's it.
    I expect there are analog wind-up versions on eBay to match your pens.
    Yes, and in fact I still have my old wind up Jerger analog clock, which would have gone better with the declared theme of the photo if I'd thought of it. Modern tournament time controls, however, use refinements such as increments or delays on every move, which require a digital timer. The set, board, and clock in the picture, although not the only tournament equipment I have, are what I would probably bring to my next event, when I can travel to them again.
    Last edited by Kaputnik; October 29th, 2020 at 03:20 PM.
    "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
    G.K. Chesterton

  10. #7
    Senior Member Pterodactylus's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Austria
    Posts
    3,885
    Thanks
    2,412
    Thanked 4,804 Times in 1,697 Posts
    Rep Power
    15

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    I share your interest in chess.

    My Dad learned me to play as child.
    I was never able to beat him for years, but later I played with friends and way later I played quite a lot on FICS.
    I got better and my Dad older, and when I started to beat him regularly he seems to loose the interest to play with me (he was kind of proud of his chess skills).
    I played almost exclusively online at that time, my Dad and one of my Uncles were not really a challenge anymore, and I did not knew other people who shared my interest.
    About 10-15 years ago I stopped playing, other things got in focus, but I learned my son to play chess when he was about 6 (just like my Dad did when I was a kid).
    Surprisingly my son (now 11) like to play with me (even he still loosing like I lost against my Dad), he seem to have a talent for the game (even my own skills deteriorated over the years not playing), he surprises me playing quite logical and good.
    I think chess is not different than most things, playing often (exercising the skill) makes you better, not exercising deteriates the skill.

  11. #8
    Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Location
    Bagasengia
    Posts
    69
    Thanks
    1
    Thanked 29 Times in 20 Posts
    Rep Power
    14

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    I've always wondered how one played chess by correspondence back in the day. I understand that Bogart (a quite accomplished chess player in his own right) often played chess that way. Is it really one move at a time via mail? That'd be a pretty mind numbingly boring way of doing it if so.
    Sent from my constipated POS computer at work.

  12. The Following User Says Thank You to Biber For This Useful Post:

    Morgaine (October 30th, 2020)

  13. #9
    Senior Member Kaputnik's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    By the long tidal river.
    Posts
    1,043
    Thanks
    2,713
    Thanked 2,570 Times in 695 Posts
    Rep Power
    14

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    Quote Originally Posted by Biber View Post
    I've always wondered how one played chess by correspondence back in the day. I understand that Bogart (a quite accomplished chess player in his own right) often played chess that way. Is it really one move at a time via mail? That'd be a pretty mind numbingly boring way of doing it if so.
    Well, boredom is a matter of perception. Hopefully the explanation won't be too boring, but bringing up something about chess risks getting me started.

    I played correspondence chess by mail along with over the board tournaments back in the last century. A typical U.S. time control averaged three days per move. That is, you would have three days after receiving your opponent's card to respond. International tournaments made it thirty days for every ten moves. Players were on their honor to report the day that they received a postcard. A certain number of timeouts per year were permitted, so that you wouldn't have to keep up on your vacation. Often, there would be a proviso to have games adjudicated (that is, a strong player would judge what the result would be with best play) if a game was still going after two years or so. Each player could submit his analysis to support what he thought the result should be.

    The attraction is that this permitted some really in depth analysis, at least in theory helping in the quest for perfection, or at least cutting down on the more boneheaded types of errors. It didn't always work out that way in practice, of course. As with online correspondence, players would typically play more than one game simultaneously. In a tournament, you would start all your games against the other players at the same time, and many players would have several tournaments going at once. You might have cards arriving every day, or pretty nearly.

    For people who enjoyed analyzing in depth, this could be absorbing; for others, not so much. Online modes of correspondence chess can be similar, if you choose to treat them that way.

    Although I use the past tense, you actually can still play chess by postal mail. I'm not interested in that any more, but if I did play that way, I would be sure to use my fountain pens.
    "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
    G.K. Chesterton

  14. The Following User Says Thank You to Kaputnik For This Useful Post:

    manoeuver (October 30th, 2020)

  15. #10
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2016
    Location
    Clinging desperately to planet Earth
    Posts
    474
    Thanks
    36
    Thanked 474 Times in 281 Posts
    Rep Power
    8

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    Quote Originally Posted by Biber View Post
    I've always wondered how one played chess by correspondence back in the day. I understand that Bogart (a quite accomplished chess player in his own right) often played chess that way. Is it really one move at a time via mail? That'd be a pretty mind numbingly boring way of doing it if so.
    Where is the boredom when one is wondering how his or her opponent will respond. Will it be a classic move, a novice like move, or something new and innovative. And then, there is considering all the possible moves one could make in response to all the various imaginable possibilities. This is Chess after all, not Draughts (Checkers) or noughts and crosses (tic, tac, toe).

  16. #11
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2013
    Posts
    6,658
    Thanks
    2,027
    Thanked 2,189 Times in 1,419 Posts
    Rep Power
    18

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    Chess is for smart people. I'm out!

  17. #12
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    3,118
    Thanks
    874
    Thanked 2,528 Times in 1,299 Posts
    Rep Power
    13

    Default Re: A moment of deliberate, grumpy, old fashioned-ness.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaputnik View Post
    I don't expect everyone here to share my interest in chess, but I'll try to make this as generally relatable as I can.

    I don't play in as many chess tournaments as I used to in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. In fact, I did not play at all, except for online correspondence games, between about 2004 and 2017, for reasons of "life getting in the way". Since then, I've tried to get in a few major tournaments a year, which generally involved traveling to another town for a few days, and staying in a hotel. Some tournaments, such as the World Open in Philadelphia, can have hundreds of players, although not all in the same section. As you can imagine, those kind of events have mostly been canceled since fairly early this year. And our local chess club, which met at a public library, does not expect to resume before April or May at the earliest.

    Many of the major tournaments have moved online for now. I've played in the Pittsburgh and Chicago Opens from my living room in Connecticut, and have signed up for another one that would normally be played in a suburb of Cincinnati. There are a number of issues with online play which I won't get into here, but sitting staring at a computer screen for hours is somehow less satisfying that sitting in a hotel ballroom staring at a real tournament sized set for hours. Although many would prefer to do neither, I'm sure.

    Anyway, I was recently reminded of a particular historical game which I wanted to look up out of sheer curiosity. A modern way to do that would have been to run a search in a chess database program (SCID in my case, since I don't have a Windows computer). Or if I wanted to play through a game from a book, then to use a computer or tablet app instead of a real chess set.

    Instead, I unpacked one of my tournament sets, moving aside the smaller one which is more practical for just playing through games on a normally sized table. I got out my Dover reprint of Morphy's Games of Chess, by Philip W. Sergeant, a reprint of a book from 1915. For added old-fashioned-ness, the book is in English descriptive notation, now largely supplanted by algebraic, and a fairly old-fashioned type of descriptive at that.

    There is no earthly reason to set up a chess clock to play through a game, but I wanted to check the battery. Yes, that's it.

    ,

    I totally get this!

    Played competitively in the UK for 15 years. It was a father/son thing, and when my father passed away I stopped playing. The joy had gone out of it. At my best I was somewhere around 2200 on the USCF scale, maybe a little higher on a good day. Not really good enough to compete in the Open competitions you are talking about, but enough to give some professionals the occasional scare!

    My favourite player, who had a philosophy of the game that I tried to uphold, was GM David Bronstein. These days I indulge in a little mobile phone chess with Stockfish (DroidFish on Android phones). Also, I follow the YouTube chess channel of Antonio Radić, also known as Agadmator. He has kind of rekindled my enthusiasm, but I am not sure I have the desire or drive to play hard again.

    In general, I don't like online play either, though I was a member of the ICC for a while. With the advent of super fast computers and software that is far beyond the average player, well... I'm not sure how genuine some of the players are nowadays, so I let membership lapse.

    Funnily enough I was looking for a chess set recently. Although I do like nice wooden boards and pieces, I became so accustomed to the standard plastic Staunton sets and vinyl boards, that I now prefer them, and the feel of such pieces in the hand brings back a lot of memories. Never used one of those electronic clocks, they weren't really a thing until after I stopped playing.

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •