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Checkers Posting Date: Mar 2 2009 4:08PM When I was in grade two, I was on the school checkers team. That’s right, I was one of the cool kids. According to the little ribbon that I still have … maybe … I’m pretty sure that competitive results identified me as the third-best checkers player at Holbrook Public School circa 1976. Not too shabby.
You want to know the scary part? I didn’t even practice. I didn’t crack a checkers textbook, nor did I accept coaching. I rose to the lofty heights of competitive checkers based on pure natural ability alone. For all we know, the only thing standing between me and checkers immortality was a little apprenticeship with one of the glorious game’s grand masters and a tiny bit of work ethic. This could have been my calling.
At least that’s what I thought until yesterday. That’s when I downloaded a little checkers application to my iPhone. Turns out it has a one player mode, of course, where you go against the computer. There’s also a little sliding scale from easy to difficult that I nudged all the way to the top figuring that one of the top three checker masters from Holbrook Public School in 1976 needed a bit of a challenge, lest I find my return to competitive checkers a tad boring and pedestrian.
I’m pretty sure I lost the first game in the absolute minimum number of moves. You start a game of checkers with twelve pieces. I was done in after sixteen moves by my computerized opponent. I tried again. Seventeen moves. I kept playing and if I got lucky, I could get in one of those situations where you could move back-and-forth between the same two squares for a while before the inevitable happened. Mostly, though, I was like a Smartie getting hit with a hammer.
So I dialed down the degree of difficulty.
Still got my ass kicked.
Then I decided that I would let the computer move first and I would just copy its moves. Didn’t help. Decimation resulted. I tried playing defensively. Whoop assed. I tried playing recklessly. Bitch slapped. I tried moving as little as possible – which is impossible, actually, considering the rules of checkers. Hog tied. I tried protecting the back row – jaberwockied – and surrendering the back row – tubthumped.
Basically, this little 99 cent mobile-phone application was not only crushing me competitively, it was disemboweling my self image, immolating my confidence and gorging on the dusty marrow of my gilded childhood memories of checker board glory.
I considered destroying my beloved phone, or at least uninstalling the checkers application. I was desperate. “One last time,” I decided, before pressing the “Start” button, ready to absorb another whooping.
But that twenty-third game was a charm. I found the old grade-two magic. I don’t know how I did it, mostly it involved a little bit of protecting my back row, a little bit of a flanking maneuver and a dump truck of luck, but I won. I left that weak-assed computer with one desperately-pinned piece flailing and begging for mercy like a tired salmon at a bald eagle convention. I slew the beast, brought it to its knees, made it cry “uncle” and shout my superiority from the mountain top!
I am the checkers champion of my basement! I rule the iPhone checker board like no has ever ruled before. I am triumphant and it is vanquished. This is my day of jubilee.
But rather than resting on my laurels and basking in the glow of my greatest accomplishment since my wife and I dispatched the Watsons in a hotly-contested game of Cranium two years ago, I played one more time. Ouch. I got my buttocks handed to me on a silver platter so shiny I could see my reflection.
Once again, I am faced with the reality that I am not a checkers savant. I am not a genius of the beautiful battle of red versus black. I am just an enthusiast, more keen than expert, more hopeful than accomplished. Actually, that pretty much describes all pursuits in my life, or most other people’s lives for that matter. We are better in our minds than we are on the checker board of life. The secret is knowing when it’s important to play anyway. |
