It has been around for hundreds of years. It is a truly universal game. Chine, Britain, Russia, and even we ”uncivilized” people from America play it. No I am not talking about Soccer and the current World Cup happenings. Well let me start off first with asking you a simple question. What do you think is the most athletic sport? You may be thinking: Football, Basketball, or maybe even Tennis. But you are all wrong.
The most athletic sport is Chess. Have you ever heard that quote before? Oh, wait I know you haven’t, because I just came up with it. Chess takes, brian power, determination, and the ability to make strategic decisions. There are millions of ways that a chess game can play itself out. No game is ever the same(unless you are playing a five year sibling that doesn’t understand the four move checkmate but that’s another topic).
Playing chess teaches you many great skills like the ones I mentioned above and many more, including how to maintain you “poker face”, think ahead, and see the consequences of you actions. I don’t think anyone could call those bad things to learn how to do.
Now that you know how Chess can help you let’s get down to the basics. Chess is played on a 8 by 8 board with alternating colored squares. There are six types of pieces in Chess. The pieces in chess are pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, the King and the Queen.
Of course just knowing what the pieces are called isn’t enough. Just like with any cool item you have to know what they do. Let’s start with the least valuable piece: The Pawn. Pawns are meant to do you “evil” bidding. They go out on the playing field know they 80% of the time will die. The pawns can move forward one space per turn. They can’t move backwards and they can only attack pieces on diagonals. Although pawns may be your low ranking lackies, they can be given a field promotion. If a pawn makes it to the opposite side of the game board they can be exchanged for any piece(usually a Queen). This extra functionality makes Pawns very valuable at the end of the game.
The next piece is the Rook. The Rook, is basically a moving castle(Apparently castles used to move when the game of Chess was invented). They can move forward, backwards and side to side as many spaces as they want if they come in contact with any other pieces.
Then there is the Knight. The knight which usually is represented as a horse moves in a L shape. I don’t know what made the inventors of chess think horses always jump forward three spaces and then magically change direction and move one space to the side. They must have known some very weird equestrians in their day. The Knight is also useful because it can jump over other pieces so it can break into enemy lines and cause havoc.
The fourth piece I am going to talk about is the Bishop. The Bishop has some trouble walking forward. So he always walks in a diagonal line. This makes it so that he can only attack pieces on his own color. Bishops are particularly helpful in attaining check mate because they can block off a whole diagonal row.
The second most valuable and definitely the most intimidating piece in Chess is the Queen. The Queen has no limits on how she can move. She can move forwards, backwards, side to side, and even diagonal! Making her the most versatile piece on the board.
Last but not least it the King. The whole reason for the game of Chess. The King can move in all the same ways the Queen can move, but it can only move one space at a time. Making him a glorified pawn. He can’t even become a Queen! If the King is put into checkmate: When he cannot move without being attacked. The game is decided.
The person who is playing white always goes first. Each player starts out with 8 pawns, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights, 2, Rooks, a Queen, and a King. Each piece is worh a certain number of points. A pawn is worth 1 point, the Rooks are worth 5 points, the Bishops & Knights are worth 3 points, the Queen 9, and the King: infite points. If there is not enough time to play a game to its finish or if you want to see how your positions stacks up to you opponents you can tally up both players points for a quick way to see who is winning.
Now that you know how to play a game, go out there procure a chess set and start playing. You do know it is the most athletic sport, right?
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Terminal apps generally are highly extensible and allow power users to make the most of their time. Currently in Linux I love using command line programs such as Mutt(which I covered earlier) & and a free text editor called Jed. They both allow the user to modify their settings with “simple” text files. Where you can change the default colors, key bindings, and about everything else. Using programs that run in the terminal don’t just do their job efficiently with little system resources, they also make you feel like a “LEET HAXOR” as the “script kiddies” would say. You just can’t beat getting rid of the mouse and moving around with ease on your keyboard. On my netbook saving system resources and processor cycles is always key and lightweight terminal programs certainly help me stay under 25% processor power with ease.
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