My Head Hurts

[liralen]

Jet likes chess.

He has always loved John's handmade chess set, wood inlay board and lathed pieces. He asked me to get them down for him, and we went through the dance of the opening moves of a chess game. I was explaining how the pieces each moved to their own character. And he explained back to me how the Monster (his name for a rook, after seeing the first Harry Potter movie, I don't blame him) moves straight. The Pointy one moves like triangles. The Horse ("no, there's no knight. I don't see a knight, where is he?") jumps everything because see... horses jump (as Jet gallops around the room).

And then he proceeds to beat me, making his own semi-random moves, but once he figured out the "killing" he started getting serious with my taking a piece and him figuring out how to take mine. Okay, so he had help from me and from John, but we could both see Jet starting to get the idea of thinking at least one move ahead, as in what could I do if he did a certain move.

Of course, after a timeout for dinner, Jet wanted to play again.

And I hate chess. I had a bad experience as the worst player on a chess team, once, and that was enough for me. So John's playing with him, now. But, man, a four-year-old that likes chess... it's not fair. I really don't want to discourage him, but it's just hard.

Comments

May you find love...

[anselm23.livejournal.com]

May you find love for chess again in your son's love for the game.

And who knows? Maybe his interest won't last. Maybe it will.

[alfvaen]

I never really hated chess, but I was never that good at it, and it doesn't interest me that much. Simon likes it too, but we have a few computer chess games that he can play with(including Battlechess). He's still at the stage where he likes to win and really hates to lose, so he often plays both sides.

He also likes checkers, which he's actually better at, but he really hates to lose that one. And I find it hard not to play to win.

[watergarden.livejournal.com]

*hug*

If he stays interested, maybe you can find a downloadable computer chess game for him? So he can be involved but you don't have to play?

Re: May you find love...

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the wish! Hm.

And, yes, if I encourage him now and don't communicate the dislike in such a way that it'll turn him off it deliberately, it could be a very sweet game for him. He's got John's spacial capabilities, seeing the whole board, and that's something I could never do that well.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

An interesting way of doing it!

While Jet's learning it, though, he wants me to play the other side, and he's learning that I am not going to be 'nice' about winning/losing, but I am being fair in that I try to present all the options as they come up and he gets to choose. He doesn't seem to mind winning or losing, but he does get a little more determined/angry every time he loses a piece. The whole game is still abstract enough I'm not sure he's there, processing wise, yet.

The end game was orchastrated mostly by John from both sides of the board.

I hate losing, too. :-) So I sympathize with Simon.

Re: May you find love...

[anselm23.livejournal.com]

All the studies of chess demonstrate that "seeing the whole board" through pattern recognition skills is critical to being a good chess player.

One of the things you could do with him, the next time you play, is tell him that you yourself don't like the game very much, but you'll play with him because it's important for him. I don't know how he'd take to that, because I've never met the kid, but you could help him understand the distinction between disliking chess, and liking playing chess with him, because it's with him.

Just a thought.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

Yeah, that's a very good idea. I just have to get through Jet's learning curve, I think, graciously before he can do that. But that is a relatively short time compared to the rest of his life.

[anselm23.livejournal.com]

The free chess program that comes with Macintosh computers now is really good. I don't recommend it for kids, because it's impossible to set it up to play "bad chess for beginners."

Re: May you find love...

[liralen.livejournal.com]

A very good, clear distinction to make, yes indeed. I tried to do that last night, as John took over, but I'll try and make sure.

Plus playing with him and emphasizing that I'll do it for him is a possibly a better way than just talking about it. And would probably do more good. I just grumble a lot when I'm playing chess and need to make sure he knows that that isn't against him, either.

It's a good boundaries issue, though, that doesn't hurt repeating.

[ericsadoyama.livejournal.com]

Lego sells a cool PC chess game (http://www.lego.com/eng/interactive/product.asp?Title=Chess&Code=PC) that my son loved. Whenever you capture a piece, the game plays a short animation of the pieces fighting. (Well, interacting, not fighting; it's a little kids' game after all.)

[dirque.livejournal.com]

I hate chess too.

remind me to tell you my chess bullying story sometime.

Wherein I was picked on by chess team players in highschool and forced to play chess so they can practice their endgame skills.

damn bullies.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Ooo! Yes. Jet would like that, definitely.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Poor, too-smart dirque...

... though that feels awfully like the chess team I was playing against, too. They knew I was smart, so they'd recruited me, and took me to a coaching session with their coach who was all enthusiastic.

And THEN I played against folks. Problem, I think, was being competitive before I was even, really compitent... bleh.

[ericsadoyama.livejournal.com]

I checked the link that I posted above more closely, and it looks like it's an old product that they don't sell directly any more. However, Froogle reports that it's still available (http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=lego+chess&btnG=Search+Froogle) from many vendors.

[watergarden.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

Good luck with it. You're a good mom, you know.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm like that too.

In Dabney (which like Ricketts had several very very good chess players) I found I played chess far better when I rotated the board 90 degrees and sat a third person (or at least an inflatable dummy) on my side.

I.e. I can kibitz, actually quite well. I can't play for crap.

I don't know why that is. Maybe I'm uncomfortable with utterly direct, no-randomness, no-third-party competition. Too afraid of failure.

But Robert and Kate have evinced a bit of interest in chess, and I often find myself having important things to do where I can't play it with them. Even my own kids. Isn't that weird?

[tagryn]

"Good luck with it. You're a good mom, you know."

Agree with that 100%. I think its great you're willing to work with Jet on chess, given what you've said about your previous experiences.

Fortunately, it doesn't sound like Jet's the kind of kid whose going to have a big problem learning how to be a gracious winner & good loser, regardless of what game he's playing at.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yeah... sounds exactly like me. Probably has to do with that failure thing, though I think, now it's kind of twisted into the "fail to teach Jet *right*" for whatever value of right... and a lot of fear about playing too wussy like or too mean or too... something and not getting it 'right' somehow.

I guess the only way I'm going to get over it is play... and Jet changed the rules on the NEXT game to be that all pieces can only move on squares of the same color, and then it was just fun.

Maybe some switch in my head says I'm *supposed* to know how to play good chess because I'm *supposed* to be this thing called "smart". Bleh.

I dunno, but, man do I empathize with you finding something else to do even with your own kids. :-)

[ericsadoyama.livejournal.com]

I found that playing games like chess became a problem with us because there's so obviously a winner and a loser. My son hated, hated, hated to lose.