Later On

My Mac came with a chess game—very nice touch, and Microsoft offers only mindless games—and I’ve been playing from time to time, generally going down in flames in fewer than a dozen moves. Very annoying. Then I decided to start playing the same opening every time, figuring that I’d gradually work my way past the various ways of losing—but, of course, the program does not unfailingly answer e4 with e5, leading into the Ruy Lopez. It also plays the French Defence (… e6), the Caro-Kann (… c6), the Sicilian (… c5), and so on.

I kept thinking I needed to dig out my book of openings, when—hello? I am playing on a computer connected to the Internet—I thought of looking for a database of openings available on-line. Man! do they have some great ones: showing, move by move (sorted from most to least used), percentage who played it and percentage of wins for white, wins for black, and draws. All derived from tournament play. I suppose you can even find databases restricted to games played by Master and above, but this one will do for now. Pretty damn nifty. Chessgames.com

With the database, I can in effect follow my plan, but instantly and drawing from thousands of games.