Little help here?
So I’m trying to figure out exactly what this blog will look like over the next couple of years. I’ve committed myself to putting some serious time into RLP. I thought maybe you could help me think about this.
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i-Chess
I’m not very good at chess. Never have been. And I’ll never be a good player because I can’t give that much of myself to one thing. But I adore the game. I can see the savage beauty of it. Yes, savage. In chess there is no escaping the power of the other person’s brain. Your mind is laid bare while your opponent laughingly runs rings around your pathetic attempts at strategy. That’s frightening to me. I always end up shouting, “Yeah, well let’s see who can write a better 300 word description of what it’s like to get your ass kicked at chess. Who’s talking trash now?”
So chess gets my vote for the scariest game ever. If you don’t think chess is scary, try playing the Chess Shredder sometime. The simple, nonplussed look of the Shredder website gives me the creeps, as does the name of their top product - "Deep Shredder 11 for Linux." FOR LINUX. The Chess Shredder fears no man.
But bad as I am at chess, I'm still good enough to beat the pants off of the chess program that came with my Macintosh. Mac Chess is embarrassingly awful, though i-Movie can create a lovely, multi-media presentation of the chess game you and your Mac shared. Admittedly, I am playing Mac Chess on the lower levels, but even the lowest levels of chess should not be this bad. What happens is I play the Chess Shredder, then run back to the Mac, slide the bar down to the easy level, and savagely trounce it. It’s incredibly childish of me. A classic example of displaced anger, I know.
But I can’t help myself. That damn Chess Shredder makes me so mad. You can feel its smug, superior attitude in the unconcerned silences between moves. Not even a blip or a beep. Just 1, 2, 3, and you’re shredded.
So I got bored one day and developed a new game. The name of this game is: “How badly can I beat the Mac chess program?”
I think this screenshot will answer that question:
Yes, those are all queens.
You’d have a hard time developing a more dominant advantage than I had in that game. And let me tell you, it takes some planning to beat Mac Chess this badly. You have to guard your pawns so you can convert them to queens later. Once you’ve eliminated every piece except the Mac’s king, you have to march all your boring pieces, like rooks and knights and bishops, to the other end of the board and put them where the Mac’s king can take them. Then you wall off the king and meticulously take your pawns to the other end of the board and get them turned into queens.
Hey, it’s not easy having 6 queens on the board. If you imagine that the queens emit laser beams like security systems in the movies when a thief is trying to break into a museum, you’ll see what I mean.
If you make one false move you’ll pin the Mac’s king where it can’t move but is not in check. That’s a draw. If that happens, you had 6 queens and the Mac had one king and still played you to a draw. Now who’s embarrassed?
Anyway I think I’ve taken this about as far as far as I can take it. Maybe you can work it so you have seven queens at the end of the game. Good luck with that. I’ve moved on to other things. My new game is even more fun. I call it, “Playing Windows Hearts and trying to shoot the moon with every hand.”
rlp
Works in Progress
“Bearing Witness,” a Foy Davis story set in Fort Davis, Texas when Foy was in 3rd grade. Part one is roughed out. Should be ready next week.
“Lenten Satchel,” a short essay on the strange items that make up my Lenten journey this year. Because of Tracy’s comment.
“Talk to the Hand” Finished. Posted 3-12 at rlp
“Last Things,” an essay about my final days at Covenant. Soon to be published by the Christian Century. Will be linked here when it is online at the CC website.
My Latest Book
I’m proud to announce that Turtles All The Way Down came out in November of 2009. This was my first experience with the Consafo model of social media community publishing.
2000 copies were printed. We sold well over 500 as advance purchases or in the weeks leading up to Christmas. This paid for the printing costs completely.
Shredder2Shredder
Submitted by evan on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 01:57.Now what we really need to do is write a program that keeps two running games on the web site and make the shredder play itself!
You might find the site www.goldtoken.com of interest. It allows turn based play of chess, hearts, backgammon (my fav) and many others. You just make a move and save it, then sometime the other play will come along and make their move, and repeat. It'll send you an email if you haven't logged on for a while and there's games to play.
Okay, confession time. I
Submitted by rlp on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 08:39.Okay, confession time. I once pitted Chess Shredder against the Mac. You choose to play black on one machine, allowing the machine the first move. Then you play white on the other.
Chess Shredder laughs at even the hardest levels of Mac chess.
Be Careful With That!!
Submitted by txredd on Wed, 03/25/2009 - 07:21.You could start an apocalypse! I saw it in a movie once!!
Which is worse?
Submitted by Sarah (not verified) on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 07:56.So, philosophical moment - which is worse, imagining the shredder as ruthless, arrogant, and all that, or knowing that in all truth it simply has NO emotion at all, no capacity to feel even a small gloat, and just rips you to shreds because that's what it does? I often reflect on folks' anthropomorphism of the ocean, e.g., ascribing to it vengeance or anger - I am made MUCH more afraid by the fact that it is empty of any such thing. At least with emotion there's something to appeal to - with a machine or with nature, there is no there there.
Oh, no doubt about it. The
Submitted by rlp on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 08:38.Oh, no doubt about it. The complete absence of emotion is much scarier. I often think about machines in factories that get someone's arm caught in them. The machine simply follows instructions, grinding away. There is no mercy because mercy doesn't enter into it. So if you're caught, it will just grind until your arm is shredded.
For me the imagining of chess shredder as having emotions was just a method to make the piece funnier and to highlight my own feelings. Not really all that philosophical.
Have no doubt
Submitted by Steve (not verified) on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 12:58.Chess Shredder is HARD. I have been playing chess titans that was included with Vista. I have been palying increasingly harder levels starting at level 1 (easy). I am in the midst of playing on level 3. The Shredder is WAY HARDER than anything I have seen so far.
I think I will try your experiment pitting one against the other.
Experiment complete
Submitted by Steve (not verified) on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 13:19.Chess Shredder (set at hard) versus Chess Titans (Level 10 - hardest).
The Shredder wins!
go the moon! love that
Submitted by administrator on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 14:26.go the moon! love that strategy!
The Chess shredder wont let
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 03/25/2009 - 11:23.The Chess shredder wont let me make certain moves that I should be able to make!
Pawns can move diagonally when they are taking another piece right? It wont let me do that!
It can only under very specific circumstances
Submitted by Steve (not verified) on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 20:02.There is one special rule, called taking en-passant. When a pawn makes a double step from the second row to the fourth row, and there is an enemy pawn on an adjacent square on the fourth row, then this enemy pawn inthe next move may move diagonally to the square that was passed over by the double-stepping pawn, which is on the third row. In this same move, the double-stepping pawn is taken. This taking en-passant must be done directly: if the player who could take en-passant does not do this in the first move after the double step, this pawn cannot be taken anymore by an en-passant move.
See illustration at http://www.chessvariants.com/d.chess/chess.html
Playing Shredder ...Yawn....
Submitted by Andrew (not verified) on Wed, 04/29/2009 - 09:26.The trouble is, if you play a good move against shredder, well the "fun" online version, it then goes into intense thinking mode for the rest of the day, which is not much fun at all, it is a way of cheating you! "Come on!" you say, "I haven't got all day, I'm at work"... but it just goes on analysing and analysing..."hey, I played a good move, deal with it will ya!"
shredder is why I stopped playing humans on the net on FICS( well I do suppose I played a few computers there as well :) and the only human I now play is my 6 year old nephew with real big, wooden pieces. The real "fun" levels of chess. Chess should be fun, it's only a game after all- not an empty experience.
i love chess, its so
Submitted by Peter (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 14:53.i love chess, its so strategic
Oh fond memories.
Submitted by film izle (not verified) on Thu, 06/11/2009 - 00:24.Oh fond memories.
Ceza
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 13:23.shredder is why I stopped playing humans on the net on FICS( well I do suppose I played a few computers there as well :) and the only human I now play is my 6 year old nephew with real big, wooden pieces. The real "fun" levels of chess. Chess should be fun, it's only a game after all- not an empty experience.
good text.
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Playing Shredder
Submitted by Emlak (not verified) on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 15:11.The trouble is, if you play a good move against shredder, well the "fun" online version, it then goes into intense thinking mode for the rest of the day, which is not much fun at all, it is a way of cheating you!
Emlak
I’m not very good at
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 15:21.I’m not very good at chess. Never have been. And I’ll never be a good player because I can’t give that much of myself to one thing. But I adore the game. I can see the savage beauty of it. Yes, savage. In chess there is no escaping the power of the other person’s brain. Your mind is laid bare while your opponent laughingly runs rings around your pathetic attempts at strategy. That’s frightening to me. I always end up shouting, “Yeah, well let’s see who can write a better 300 word description of what it’s like to get your ass kicked at chess. Who’s talking trash now?”
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I’m not very good at chess. Never have been. And I’ll never be a good player because I can’t give that much of myself to one thing. But I adore the game. I can see the savage beauty of it. Yes, savage. In chess there is no escaping the power of the other person’s brain. Your mind is laid bare while your opponent laughingly runs rings around your pathetic attempts at strategy. That’s frightening to me. I always end up shouting, “Yeah, well let’s see who can write a better 300 word description of what it’s like to get your ass kicked at chess. Who’s talking trash now?”
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The Hardest Aspect of Chess
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 07/17/2009 - 07:33.For me, the hardest part about playing Chess is finding a human being to play against! I am currently teaching my son to play. We have all of the pieces memorized. The actual movements are next.
Michael
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