Very well, I cede the match, but I'm a bit disappointed that I did so poorly. I thought I'd be better after all this time, not worse.

And since when have you ever had to worry about that with me?:DL
This, and the rest of the apologies in your post are not necessary. You're a much better player than I am, and I respect you. I've never considered you haughty or arrogant in anything, including this thing. It looks like I'll have to take your advice to heart and start all over again, because the people I've been playing against evidently did nothing to prepare me for you, meine freund. :salute:

I'll be back, though, and I will beat you one of these days. Be prepared:DL

Though I hate to lose in strategy games (that's why I really always fight for victory, while games of luck do not light my candle at all when winning and do not interest me when losing), I'd be the first one to congratulate you. But I think you are a bit too optimistic regarding the time it needs. Have you ever considered to visit a chess club? there you get many opportunities to play, much feedback right the minute when it is needed, analysis, and also theory courses (if they really do business). That and studying one or two books for a beginning would be the best thing you can do. You need to learn to calculate more precisely, and more moves ahead, and you need to know some theory. Do not try to reinvent the wheel - make use of what already had been thought out by others! ;) It's not for no reason that their ideas are still being published, while yours are not (thinking of 2.f3) :D ;)

What about a match of Abalone? In that, I am almost a novice, although knowing it since longer time, but I rarely, if ever, play it, so if you do not know it, we nevertheless would probably have the same chances. I admire that simple and elegant design very much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abalone_(board_game)

I would recommend to play with so-called Belgian (or any other) Daisy, though, not the default starting position - iot is very prone for endless blocking matches that result in a locked-down draw.

If you are interested, I could find again a diagram to mark the fields with coordinates so that we use the same notation.

I never played Abalaone in the format we used in the chess threads here. It would be an experiment, but maybe interesting. I volunteer in taking photos of the board and post them frequently. The CD with an Abalone program I bought some years ago I have hidden somwhere and now cannot find it anymore.

Yeah, but this last one wasn't very good, apparently. The same moves I tried in this match worked wonderfully there, but as soon as I played you I had to re-learn all that variation stuff after move 4 and I could see that I was doomed.

Workin' on it. Thanks, boss:salute:


Well that doesn't sound like fun! We're not all inheritors of a proud tradition of German military excellence, y'know
I take some heart in the fact thatI kind of knew that.


Sure, I'll play with you. I agree that it would be interesting. I'll start working on learning how to play as soon as I get back from work. Looking forward to it, Sky:yeah: