Chess

Noah is really into Chess. Too bad I am not a better player. For me board games were always for children. And after I started doing Kung Fu seriously, I sort of dropped everything else. Well I still enjoyed playing music and painting. But it was almost as if I HAD to do those things. Or those things were doing me.
I realize now that I was wrong to not play Chess with friends in High school and College, or at least watch more games. Especially since there were was one particularly good player in High school and also on in College. My College friend put on a demonstration where he basically played the whole school in several simultaneous games. I participated sort of to show support. I knew he would beat me easily. But I was still amazed at how stupid some of my moves were. Because I had not played I made moves worse than what Noah would do now. For instance. I behaved as if my queen could not be killed if I approached to kill another piece. Why? I have no idea.

I have moved beyond that level recently just because I realized I would actually have to teach Noah something other than how the pieces moved. I am still better than he is (for now) but actually if I try to play Noah at Chess and Jonah at checkers, while moving quickly, Noah actually. This has more to do with how bad I am and less to do with how good he is. My neighbor said he will be willing to play Noah.

I also taught him Chinese Chess and even playing him a lone I made quick and stupid moves and he beat me. (Which was good. Since he gets pretty upset when I win.) I wonder how those great players I knew and never even really talked about Chess with would teach their kids?

I have also started trying to learn Go. I made a board and made pieces out of rocks and play dough. I usually play some strange childish version of that with Jonah. I don't think we even take turns properly. I still don't completely understand how to count up points. But we enjoy putting stones down and capturing each others pieces.

We also started reading Hikaru no Go. Even after reading these I have very little understanding of the game. I went to some websites but part of the point of these games for me, is to do something that is mentally challenging but also off of the computer.