Day 182

Playing chess against a computer program is very frustrating. I'm here on facebook with 8 or so human opponents and often after I make my moves I'm in the mood for more. So I play the chess computer facebook has on the application.

I can defeat the 'easy' setting without trouble, and I can defeat the 'medium' setting most of the time, with a lot of hard thought, but I cannot for the life of me win, or even draw the 'hard' setting.

When I play people, the games are always chock full of mistakes. We all make moves we wish we had back just a few moments later. I'm good enough at the game that I can avoid blunders (moves defined as being inarguably bad for a player within a 1-3 move projection), mind the full board, and simply wait until a mistake comes along that I can exploit for the win.

But good computers never make mistakes, and they do not fall into traps. A trap is a move that offers a seemingly highy intuitive opportunity for response. Intuition is both an advantage and a handicap, and in this respect it is a handicap that computers do not have. The computer is purely logical, dispassionate, and unemotional.

But people, boy do people ever care. Like in any game, or relationship, there are pivotal moments on the when all things can either coalesce into a perfect combination or unravel and crash down into useless rubble, taking your architactural effort, and dignity, along with it. And by that same token, sometimes very small and seemingly harmless decisions follow you, haunt you in ways that cannot possibly be considered fair.

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