Your first memory of chess ...
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My grandfather taught me the game when I was 4. He was an expert in the late 70s/early 80s and it was about four years after learning the game that I finally beat him. My parents thought it would be foolish of him to try to teach me because I would never sit still for very long. I overheard then say that and learned to prove them wrong :)
Oct 13, 2016
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#62
I came back to the game over 40 years later. I dabbled with it from time to time but never with real interest, but I came back. That's all that matters to me. Have fun all and let yet learning adventure begun.
ebillgo wrote:
A bit dramatic was my first encounter with chess. There was a book in the public library , black cover with two over-sized pieces facing each other and the title was something like Fischer vs Spassky. I thought it was about the cold war between USA and USSR, only to find pages and pages of games in the descriptive notation. From then on, I read the daily chess column in the South China Morning Post ( a local English medium newspaper ) by Leonard Barden featuring a puzzle . Now the same space is replaced by a Sudoku puzzle, while the space for bridge remains unchanged over so many years.
I have this book. I'd have to find it to be sure, but I believe it was Sherwin that wrote it with some light analysis. There was a book with some deep analysis by Reshevsky as well. The copy I have still has a postcard in it to order the Reshevsky copy.
Oct 15, 2016
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#64
My first memory of chess...well, let me think. If I am not mistaken, it was when aliens gave chess to me as a present, for being the only sensible human being they had met. I decided other humans may appreciate it, and you know the rest...
Oct 15, 2016
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#65
ARIST0PHANES wrote:
My first memory of chess...well, let me think. If I am not mistaken, it was when aliens gave chess to me as a present, for being the only sensible human being they had met. I decided other humans may appreciate it, and you know the rest...
Yeah, we know the rest. And we will let you think. My question is if the aliens gave you this gift why did they set you so LOW. Geesh, you should be playing Magnus.
Oct 16, 2016
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#66
Embuna wrote:
ARIST0PHANES wrote:
My first memory of chess...well, let me think. If I am not mistaken, it was when aliens gave chess to me as a present, for being the only sensible human being they had met. I decided other humans may appreciate it, and you know the rest...
Yeah, we know the rest. And we will let you think. My question is if the aliens gave you this gift why did they set you so LOW. Geesh, you should be playing Magnus.
They taught me the rules, and I liked the game at first, but then I realized I had better things to do like coming up with a theory of everything, in which I am still working.
I taught it to myself when i was 7, and I found a chessboard with instructions, I didnt knew nothing about castling or pawn promoting until i was 9, tough, I would often bring my chessboard to class and win against everyone during recess, I also won against myself everyday, then about 10 months ago a 7 y o dared me to a game of chess, I was very blocked that day, and hadnt played chess since first grade, even when I had an extra queen and an extra rook, we drawed, I was like no, I cant let this kid beat me, and since then I started practicing again.
I remember as a kid growing up my dad bought my brother and I some plastic chessmen. We used to sit playing, and even one time we rented the movie "Searching For Bobby Fischer" - my brother and I sat playing and watching at the same time (he beat me, of course). My mom also took us to chess club for a short time but we stopped going, for some reason. I was around six or seven at the time, and was more interested in airplanes and flight than I was with chess. Sadly, I stopped playing seriously for a long time until only last year, when I got back into chess again hardcore. My mom still has the first chess set that she bought us when we were kids.
It looked something like this, although the learner's markings were a little different and the board itself doubled as a plastic carry box, with black and white squares.
http://www.toysrus.com/graphics/product_images/pTRU1-4770223enh-z6.jpg
Nov 3, 2016
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#71
It was 1964, the Beatles were on TV, my second cousin had a Ford Galaxy 500 convertible, and he and my Dad were both in college, sitting at the living room table playing chess. I was 7 years old, captivated. The USA had a Space Program, and the world was an exciting place. It all fit together, somehow.
Nov 30, 2021
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#72
My dad taught me how to play when I was somewhere in the single digits. The first time I managed to win -- my oldest memory of chess -- I offered another game, he told me "F**k you," and stormed off. That's just how chess is.
Dec 9, 2021
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#73
I was 6 or 7 and my older brother would play chess with his friend. The term "discovered check" had a different meaning in those days - it was when, during a game, it was "discovered" than one player or the other was in check, and probably had been for some time. This meant the game was null and void, and had to be restarted. The best example I remember was when they noticed that the two Kings were on adjacent squares.
TurboFish wrote:
Please feel free to share your first memory of chess.
(Also, please respond if you can help with my request below)
-----
As a young boy in the late 60s/early 70s, I was first exposed to chess via a radio broadcast from Cuba. I remember my father hunched over an old AM radio, straining to hear a spanish-speaking male voice through thick static.
We were recent Cuban immigrants, having moved to Florida seeking greater economic opportunity. Although I spoke spanish, I did not understand the mysterious code coming over the radio. At first I wondered if my father was a spy! (being vaguely aware that tension existed between the U.S. and Cuba).
I did not yet know of chess, but the little wooden figurines crowding the board on the kitchen table of course intrigued me. And when, after each burst of radio code, my father moved one of the pieces to a new square, I started to realize that he was watching some kind of game. A very important game judging by the intensity of his focus (shushing anyone who dared to speak during the broadcast).
The "radio match" was my initiation into chess, and my interest steadily grew over the years as I watched dad and his best friend (a fellow Cuban of his generation) play chess every weekend with great passion. Sadly, I did not get to play many games with dad since I was a fast learner, and his machismo did not allow him to risk loosing to a child!
My father is long gone now, having succombed at age 64 to the effects of 40 years of smoking unfiltered Camel cigarettes. As a middle-aged man myself, I am only now really starting to realize the preciousness of what I lost when he passed. Now I am trying to reconstruct some of these long-burried memories (only the good, not the bad).
If anyone out there possibly knows of the specifics of the "radio match" of my childhood, please tell me! The AM radio broadcast originated in Cuba sometime in the late 1960s or ealry 1970s. At least one of the player was an important Cuban, playing on-site (probably Havana). The other player might have been there too, or perhaps in the U.S. relaying moves via radio or teletype. Although Capablanca was my father's chess hero, the great Cuban Champion could not have been involved having died in 1942.
I searched the internet without success, but I hope some of you chess historians can help.
P.S. Father's Day is Sunday June 21 this year. Don't miss the opportunity to connect with him while he's still around.
I was eating grilled cheese at lunch outside. This was in ocean city. I was playing a chess game with a friend when a seagull swooped down and stole my grilled cheese. It sh*t on the chess board.
Dec 9, 2021
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#75
I think my oldest memory of chess was when my dad tried to teach me and let me win, but I can't recall how old I was. If I had to guess I was around 5. I didn't really get into chess or start trying to improve until the fourth grade when I had fun slaughtering my friends during recess. I've kept that tradition to this day, but that's mostly because they aren't any good.
Another of my early memories of the game came from a long-ago television commercial for shampoo that I only saw a couple of times. A elegant couple in formal wear gazed across a chessboard at each other until the man reached across the board and let the woman's hair down in slow motion.
Jan 10, 2022
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#77
Ziryab wrote:
It was the early 1850s during a previous life. My chums and I were rafting the Mississippi and getting near New Orleans. A gambler that we camped with told us stories of a young man who had astonished the top lawyers and judges of that city by beating them at a board game. The gambler was hoping that we knew how to play so he could provoke us to wager the little cash that we had picked up robbing a few people upriver.
