I’ve recently developed an obsession.
As befitting my middle aged status, its a sedate, some might say, a downright boring obsession.
Not for me, the high octane thrills of a mid-life crisis and a sports car with the roof down...
It’s Checkers.
Or, “Chess for Dummies,” if you like.
No horseys. No castles. Just little red and black buttons.”
Its my daughter’s fault. She’d been playing at school. And at a loose end one evening, she challenged me to a game.
I loved Checkers when I was her age, especially as I almost always won. In my mind I was a Champion Checkers player. I may not have played in over 30 years but I didn’t let rustiness, or the fact I was playing a 10 year old get in the way of the competitive spirit.
I wiped the floor with her.
Played three. Won three.
…though, she should actually have won one game. But lack of concentration meant she threw away a winning position. That showed her.
“We’ll just see how those knees hold up at Double-Dutch.“
It was enough to stir the lurking obsessive in me.
We don’t have a board, so we’d played online through her school’s website.
In search of new challenges, I found a site where I could test myself against the Checkers Algorithm™. I sailed through the Easy, Medium and Hard levels, barely needing to think… before being destroyed in under two minutes at Expert Level.
Never mind.
Second time around, I applied the lessons learnt and beat the AI in a minute and a half.
Take that, robots!
Execute Extermination Protocol Sequence.
Having proved human superiority over the machines I needed more of a challenge.
The same website offers a two-player game where you’re matched against another random player. Its completely anonymous so I have no idea who I’m playing or how good they are.
Better than me, it turned out. I lost consistently and quickly that first evening.
Oh, and I almost forgot: PREPARE TO DIE!!!!!
Whilst this was frustrating, it didn’t deter me. The competitive instinct kicked in and I was spurred on to keep going until I started winning.
Which was tricky, due to the prevalence of bad sportsmanship in the murky world of anonymous online Checkers.
It turns out some people really don’t like losing. So rather than finishing a game, they will just quit if they don’t like the way its going. Which I could take as a moral victory… but moral victories aren’t what I’m playing for.
I want the pride of seeing the word ‘WINNER!’ appear as I crush the hopes and dreams of another vanquished opponent unable to match my superior strategic mind.
I’ve taken enough beatings of my own and played out every game until the bitter end, regardless of how badly I’m doing. There are people out there without my upstanding attitude. Even in Checkers, moral turpitude is prevalent.
There are different ways of pulling the plug on my march to victory. Some will quit as soon as they make a wrong move and things start going against them. No attempts from them to turn it around. Time is precious and they have other opponents to wind up. If only they’d hung around. I’ve lost my fair share of games from superior positions due to lack of concentration. But its not for them to attempt the satisfaction of the come from behind victory.
Then there are the ones that will drag you through a game, to the point that its clear there isn’t going to be any chance of coming back.
tnocs.com contributing author and internationally renowned online checkers grandmaster jj lives at leeds
Rather than playing to its conclusion, that’s the signal to quit –
… and deny me the satisfaction of that little message, the validation of that one congratulatory word.
Most games are done in under five minutes. But at its most extreme, I spent 29 minutes strategising and working my way into a winning position… only for my opponent to quit when I finally broke their resistance and left them a couple of moves from defeat.
And then there are those that don’t actually quit. They just leave you hanging.
There are two timers on the game. One shows how long the game is taking. The other counts down from a minute for each players turn. At first, I thought the countdown meant that once it reached zero, if you hadn’t taken your “go,” you’d be out.
I was wrong. It’s completely pointless.
It gets to zero, resets and counts down all over again. Its happened enough times that it must be a tactic that some unscrupulous bastard is using, so that once it’s clear they’re going to lose, they just let the clock keep running and resetting.
I can only guess their thinking is that if they force their opponent to quit first through boredom or frustration, they believe that makes them the winner.
Whereas they’re complete @$£%s.
I realise there are worse things happening in the world right now. And you might think that I need to get out more.
Having spent 29 minutes playing a game of checkers that never reaches an actual conclusion? I’m inclined to agree.
At least it’s a harmless and free obsession and it keeps my mind active.
Anyone for a game?
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Go check out the story of Marion Tinsley – brilliant! Checkers was also one of the first to be “solved” using computers. As a result, for checkers competitions today they use various starting points so it doesn’t end in a draw every time.
**When I was in fifth grade, I went to a private school so my mother couldn’t come and take us away from our father. I LOVED the school, mainly because we were given all the assignments for the week on Monday, and could explore our interests after we’d finished our work. Initially, my explorations led to checkers.
We had six boys in the class, and we started a league. I won the “league”, and my classmates started to do other things rather than finish the schedule.
I haven’t played checkers much since then, but creating leagues to compete against friends? Fantasy baseball? Fantasy soccer? In the 1980s, ALL the electronic hand-held sports games from Coleco and Mattel?
ON IT.
I had an idea for a TNOCS series where I explained the reasons behind my favorite sports teams (I don’t stick to Philadelphia teams, though they’re usually my second favorite). One of them involved a league I created.
Everton, however, has entirely to do with the fact that I enjoy masochism.
Having now read up on Marion its fair to say he would have wiped the floor with me. Love the detail that one of the 7 games he ever lost was due to being drunk. I also couldn’t help but notice the detail that he died in the town of Humble, Texas. If there’s one state that I wouldn’t associate with the word Humble its Texas – apologies for the stereotyping for any actual humble Texans. According to Wikipedia the town has a motto; Where people make a difference. Which doesn’t strike me as particularly humble either. Perhaps it should say; Where people make a difference but we don’t really like to draw attention to it (except on this sign). Maybe a bit wordy.
I played some checkers in my youth, but not enough to have developed any salient memories of specific times playing it.
Your description of the online gaming community doesn’t surprise me, given that so many online games are more of the “hop on/hop off” variety. One thing I wonder is if the online checkers system has a chat function for the players to communicate. This might introduce more toxicity into the system (at least for certain antisocial individuals), but it also raises the possibility of engaging players enough that they feel obligated to stay on til the end of a game.
Or, maybe chess has a better gaming community?
There’s no chat function on the site I found to play on. I expect it would result in the two scenarios you mention, some would feel obligated to play on while others would use it to troll their opponent.
I never learnt to play chess though, again, my daughter has introduced me to that. In her last school year they had a chess teacher come in once a week throughout the year. She went from saying in September when they started that she couldn’t think of anything more boring to asking for a chess set for Christmas. She taught me a few of the basics so maybe I should give up on the Checkers and advance my chess skills. Though that becomes a lot more time consuming than the average game of checkers.
Smart move, showing your daughter no mercy. She’ll be master of checkers at her school. And one day, she’ll beat you. Or maybe she is already the master of checkers and doesn’t want to beat her daddy and hurt his feelings.