![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneWe had a little family reunion in Las Cruces Saturday. Pretty good turnout, about 30, the only ones missing were my parents, sister's clan, and the Oregon branch. Well, we were probably missing more, but that's good enough. VERY good food, lots of fun talk, I took a lot of pictures which I'm probably not going to bore people with.
But I did spend some time being a chess coach!
I'm not much of a chess player, my rating might be in the 1000-1200 range, which makes me a duffer/weekend warrior. I helped run a lot of tournaments and photographed a few more. I have autographs from Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, and many people whose names I can barely pronounce.
At the reunion, I had two second (or third or fourth or fifth) cousins who were playing at chess. It got so painful for me to watch that I sat down and started teaching them better movies, combinations, etc. The sad thing was that the didn't know what en passant was, much less how castling worked. They were also clueless regarding stalemate.
So I gave 'em a lot of education in an hour. I also suggested they get a copy of Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, one of the best intro to chess games ever written (IMHO). It was reissued back in '82, but my first copy was in the early 70's. I'm also going to pull out a pair of sets and boards when I'm in Phoenix this weekend and drop 'em off for them. The set they were playing with was rather sad: it was a combo chess/checkers set with red and black squares and it was missing a white pawn and a black bishop, they were using quarters as replacements.
But man, it was a lot of fun! Makes me sort of consider seeing if I could find a chess coach gig here, but I'm really not good enough. The question is: am I good enough to teach?
But I did spend some time being a chess coach!
I'm not much of a chess player, my rating might be in the 1000-1200 range, which makes me a duffer/weekend warrior. I helped run a lot of tournaments and photographed a few more. I have autographs from Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, and many people whose names I can barely pronounce.
At the reunion, I had two second (or third or fourth or fifth) cousins who were playing at chess. It got so painful for me to watch that I sat down and started teaching them better movies, combinations, etc. The sad thing was that the didn't know what en passant was, much less how castling worked. They were also clueless regarding stalemate.
So I gave 'em a lot of education in an hour. I also suggested they get a copy of Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, one of the best intro to chess games ever written (IMHO). It was reissued back in '82, but my first copy was in the early 70's. I'm also going to pull out a pair of sets and boards when I'm in Phoenix this weekend and drop 'em off for them. The set they were playing with was rather sad: it was a combo chess/checkers set with red and black squares and it was missing a white pawn and a black bishop, they were using quarters as replacements.
But man, it was a lot of fun! Makes me sort of consider seeing if I could find a chess coach gig here, but I'm really not good enough. The question is: am I good enough to teach?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 11:38 am (UTC)