Think about why you play chess.

Conan learned chess went he was sent to the East to train and of course he was "bred to the finest stock"

To those of you who play chess to feel the wind in your hair and the falcon at your wrist you are...... WRONG!!!! please see crazychessplaya's post for the right reason to play chess

>>Crazychessplaya wrote: Why play chess? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.<<

What I have learned is that guys who get too high when they win often have a conniption fit when they lose. Even Bobby, as a boy, would bawl when he lost.

"...it was said that the child prodigy loathed losing and had just learned to do so without crying."

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/magazine/28fischer-t.html

 Another example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek6lVKfqUPs&feature=related

From "If":

"...If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters the same..." "Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it. and -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my Son."

Bobby Fischer and John McEnroe never became men...much for this reason.

Yes, that about covers my reasons for playing chess.  I love DiscWorld novels! You have to know literature to get all the jokes.

I reckon Conan realised pretty quickly that his talents lay elsewhere.

Hmmmmmm.......

I'm simply fascinated by the fact that a game on an 8x8 board of squares can be so deep and press the limits of the human mind to the very edges . . . The combination of art, science, beauty, power and struggle is so much fun to experience. Granted, I still hang pieces, but that doesn't change how I feel about the game.

-Ted

... because I'm married and it gives me something to practice other than dating. 

... because I'm going to solve it.