The Pandolfini Effect

I'm not a very voracious reader (except when I'm traveling, I normally only read for an hour or so each day before I go to sleep), so on Wednesday when I finished reading two books on the same day I was left feeling particularly satisfied. It helped that one of these books, American Rust, which right up until the day before had seemed destined for a truly unhappy ending, actually ended on a quite optimistic note.

There's hope for my chess game, too. The other book I finished was Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess. Although as I mentioned the other day this book is easy to follow, I probably only took in something like half of what was written. Still, this was enough to help me beat the chess game on my iMac for the first time ever (although admittedly I had the difficulty level set lower than normal), and so when my brother challenged me to a game I accepted, thinking it would be a good opportunity to see how much progress I had really made.

Black to move...

Two days later this game is still in progress. I think we're either at the end of the middlegame or the beginning of the endgame. Despite my brother's rather flattering comments and the surprising result of the poll on his blog, I think the longer the game goes on the more of an advantage he, as the vastly more experienced player, has. There should be a result later today.

Also on Wednesday I received the copy of The Imperial Cruise which I'd ordered from The Book Depository. Not only did I get free shipping by getting it from The Book Depository instead of Amazon, but I also got the paperback version, which isn't officially out yet and didn't even appear on Amazon until very recently.

The most challenging and entertaining game ever invented

One of the tasks I've assigned myself this year (I hesitate to use the word "resolution", since according to this article in the The Guardian, New Year's resolutions are almost doomed to failure) is to improve my chess game.

I learned to play chess (or should I say, I learned the rules of chess) as a teenager, and have played casually on and off ever since, mostly against my brother Mark and more recently against my walking buddy Erik. But I never really thought much about things like tactics or strategy, and have never read a book about chess. So the other day on my way back from the doctor's I popped into my local library and picked more or less at random from the half a dozen or so chess books on the shelf a paperback called Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess.

It turns out to have been a pretty good choice. Although it starts with the fundamentals by explaining how each piece (sorry, "unit") moves, this book is really aimed at people like me who are familiar with the basics and have played a bit of chess but are ready to turn it up a notch. It's written in a casual style and is very easy to follow.

Although there are lots of diagrams in the book illustrating the various moves, I'm finding it helpful to have a chess set beside me as I read. One problem I was faced with was how to prevent our two cats jumping up and knocking the units over. I've gotten around this so far simply by keeping the cats out of the room while I'm reading, although one possible solution (a suggestion from my brother) would be to get one of these fancy vertical chess sets.

But is all this effort really worthwhile? Isn't chess just a waste of time, like watching TV (not The Wire, of course)? Shouldn't I be spending that time doing more important things? What will I gain from improving my chess game? Perhaps Pandolfini is right, and chess is "the most challenging and entertaining game ever invented", but it's still only a game, right?

(American Rust update: Things have gone from bad to worse for our two young protagonists. One is in prison, and the other is on the road somewhere between Pennsylvania and California, practically penniless after having been robbed by a fellow freight hopper.)