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Chess is Hard, Work is Good

Posted by Patrick on Sunday, July 15, 2007

I've survived my fourth week of work at my new job, and I'm happy to say that it's good stuff. I'm learning all sorts of moderately-cool things about the newspaper biz, and the website work is challenging and generally interesting subject matter.

Our group has a department chessboard that, up until my arrival, was only used by our manager and one of my co-workers. From what I've been told, my manager was undefeated against the co-worker, and said co-worker was happy to learn that I knew how to play chess.

Now I can say that I know the rules of chess (rooks go straight, bishops go diagonally, etc) but I lack any sort of strategy other then don't get checkmated. I played a little in my scout camp days, but never kept up with it and thus never developed any real skill in the game.

This lack of skill became apparent quickly while playing lunch-time-chess with my new co-worker, and I'm currently 0-2 after two games. I did do better in the second game, though, getting him in check a few times. I suspect he was letting me win (at least for the moment), most likely to extend his lunch break while formulating a strategy that provides the most awesome way to beat me.

Like playing laser-tag against an Army marksman, playing chess against a computer programmer puts me at a slight disadvantage. I'll try to get better with practice, hoping for at least one win before the end of the year.

Any board-based advice from the readers?