Chess

So Parker and I started playing chess a few months ago. I don't recall whether I taught him how the pieces moved, or whether he got that from one of his little pals, but he was very much a beginner. To help him learn without it being frustrating or patronizing—i.e. to be able to play real games—I used a method recommended by a friend of mine. For the first game I played with just my king and three pawns, while he had his whole set. Once he beat me with that, I was able to add another piece, a bishop, on our next game. And then I would get a pawn, and then a knight, and so on. He mapped out all of the "levels" he would need to pass before we could play real games, and that sort of thing always motivates him.

We played this way for a long time, and it was really fun for both of us. I always tried my best to win, and forced him to live with the consequences of his mistakes. But he was extremely clueless, and tended to focus on the wrong things. For example, he was obsessed with promoting his pawns, and would build his whole game around promoting pawns while never even bringing out his queen. I kept drilling him on his goal in the game, to get the king, but he was catching on very slowly.

But then it turned out that I was just a crappy teacher, because once he started going to an after school chess class with a bunch of his pals, his game changed dramatically. Something clicked, and he was now focused on all the right things, throwing these multi-pronged assaults on my king which I'd have to scramble to defend with my limited set of pieces. I've never been great at chess, and as we played through the levels, I was basically forced to learn how to play chess, just to avoid the humiliation of getting my ass handed to me by my 7-year old son.

So we made it to the penultimate level last week, where I had everything but my queen, and I was sweating bullets to keep beating him, which I did for 5 or 6 games before I finally succumbed and he took me down. So now he has earned the right to a level playing field with dear old dad.

He immediately challenged me to a full game on Chess With Friends, which was a reward he was clearly looking forward to, and over the last two days we've been playing our first full game. We're approaching the end game now, and I think I'm going to emerge victorious, but it's been a real nail-biter, and I'm only ahead because of a couple of key moves he missed along the way. I'm going to keep fighting the good fight, but I think it's clear that he'll be able to beat me before he finishes first grade, and he'll probably be wiping the floor with me before the summer is over.

There is probably a nice, long German word to describe the mix of pride and shame that I feel about the whole thing.