Friday, March 14, 2008
Recent Events
(2)
Leonardo Da Vinci - Chess Master? Maybe. I'm not, of course, but I like to teach the game to the less fortunate. So in between sessions of Civilization III this week I did a little chess on Chill, which is the Comcast game division. The results are fascinating. After winning against paul Kersey (1700+) my rating exceeded the stalker's comfort zone and I was reduced to my beloved 1200 again. Alright! There followed nine straight wins against players rated 1203, 1438, 1189, 1185, 1200, 1322, 1301, 1200, and 1287. 'They' then brought in a player named, 'hammer64' (1800+) who disassembled me quite artfully while playing black in a Silician Defense (lots of wall-banging above as I wrote about h64). There followed a series of wins against 1280, 1200, 1281, 1200, 1219, and 1200. There followed a loss to 1279; however the system hung up, negating the results. I rebooted and continued, winning against 1200 and 1303. After all that my rating is now 1307 and is beginning to intrude into 'El Fisho's' comfort zone. My impression of 'Chill' is that it is much worse than the system it replaced. By the way, the rating calculator is obviously not ELO. Also, there were two incidents during the series which served to distract me during games: in one case I got the message 'Connection lost' which turned out to be an error - I continued and defeated the opponent - and in the other case the chess screen got zapped down to the bar. I upzapped it and continued. These kinds of distractions can be critical in a tense game.
More interesting is the most recent C-III game which found me in a defensive war against both the Persians and the Babylonians simultaneously. I had no iron, but neither did Jerkses nor the Barfs. I had discovered iron on a nearby island but had to wait 20 turns while I constructed a harbor. Then my (Oops. Just walked into the kitchen for beer #7 and noticed that it was 1800: I missed the news except for whatever is on TiVo. Barf.) Legionaires really kicked butt, taking key enemy cities and expanding the empire considerably.
The warm days recently have allowed me to keep the fans running continuously, considerably reducing noxous gasses. Come on summertime!
Leonardo Da Vinci - Chess Master? Maybe. I'm not, of course, but I like to teach the game to the less fortunate. So in between sessions of Civilization III this week I did a little chess on Chill, which is the Comcast game division. The results are fascinating. After winning against paul Kersey (1700+) my rating exceeded the stalker's comfort zone and I was reduced to my beloved 1200 again. Alright! There followed nine straight wins against players rated 1203, 1438, 1189, 1185, 1200, 1322, 1301, 1200, and 1287. 'They' then brought in a player named, 'hammer64' (1800+) who disassembled me quite artfully while playing black in a Silician Defense (lots of wall-banging above as I wrote about h64). There followed a series of wins against 1280, 1200, 1281, 1200, 1219, and 1200. There followed a loss to 1279; however the system hung up, negating the results. I rebooted and continued, winning against 1200 and 1303. After all that my rating is now 1307 and is beginning to intrude into 'El Fisho's' comfort zone. My impression of 'Chill' is that it is much worse than the system it replaced. By the way, the rating calculator is obviously not ELO. Also, there were two incidents during the series which served to distract me during games: in one case I got the message 'Connection lost' which turned out to be an error - I continued and defeated the opponent - and in the other case the chess screen got zapped down to the bar. I upzapped it and continued. These kinds of distractions can be critical in a tense game.
More interesting is the most recent C-III game which found me in a defensive war against both the Persians and the Babylonians simultaneously. I had no iron, but neither did Jerkses nor the Barfs. I had discovered iron on a nearby island but had to wait 20 turns while I constructed a harbor. Then my (Oops. Just walked into the kitchen for beer #7 and noticed that it was 1800: I missed the news except for whatever is on TiVo. Barf.) Legionaires really kicked butt, taking key enemy cities and expanding the empire considerably.
The warm days recently have allowed me to keep the fans running continuously, considerably reducing noxous gasses. Come on summertime!
