You wouldn’t believe how many chess games I’ve begun but not played to comple­tion. Part of the problem stems from the fact that I only play (or rather, start playing) human-versus-computer games. Humans playing chess (not world champions, of course) add some kind of ‘flavor’ or person­ality to their game, and not all moves are completely logical. Computer chess players, on the other hand, tend to…win, with cold preci­sion. Now I could tweak the diffi­culty level of the game, effec­tively asking the computer to make occasional mistakes, but how could someone play an honor­able game, knowing that the opponent was not giving a hundred percent?

Now that my 25^th-week resolu­tion is to play chess more seriously, I guess I should hunt for humans to joust with me. Any takers?