2 min read

Updates to Opera, Strange Chess Game

Just a little notice for you all that there is a new version of Opera out, that fixes a security issue with the *NIX version of their software, as well as some other enhancements and bug fixes. Definitely go and download it.

In other opera news, the community has just received a much needed bug fix. Now you finally receive notifications of comments via e-mail when you configure the appropriate setting in your preferences. Isn't that nice? :p Threaded commenting isn't really a part of Opera yet, but I don't know that it really needs that.

And on to the more interesting things. I was playing a game of chess with my Uncle, and let's just say the game was the strangest that we had ever encountered.

To start off, it was a pretty classic middle pawn race with minor pieces to put pressure on the center ground, each one of us trying to make more space and push the other person back into a worse situation. Both of us were pretty good at maintaining pawn structure, but I think I did worse than my Uncle did.

In a radical first step a queen trade was offered up by myself, or at least, pushed forward. Remarkably, neither of us decided to capitalize on it, and the lane was opened up. There was significan pressure along that lane until I moved my queen out of the way in hopes of making a bit of a change.

The game had a strange character about it, in that the position felt very closed, but if one looked at the situation, it was actually a very powerful struggle of long range pieces assisted by knights in the center ground. Both of us knew that at any point the first person to make the mistake would end up dead.

As it turns out, that was me. I castled in hopes of bringing my rook to bear along the center lane, and to reinforce the queen along that pathway. It seemed to be working pretty well, until I moved my queen out of the way to let the rook through. In a very very bad twist of fate, that just happened to be a spot that let my Uncle capitalize on a 3 move force that turned my queen into a spectator.

After that, I couldn't really gain any advantage, and while I had a lot of power, I felt more like the 200 Elves at Helm's Deep, or wherever it was in the Movie version of the Lord of the Rings. I had a lot of power all focusing, and it was really good, but all in all, the heat was just too heavy, and the overpowering force of the queen kept me at bay as she threatened to checkmate me with unearthy speed.

I still managed to hold onto a few more moves, and tried to make something happen. I almost had it a few times, but alas, I couldn't make it work. In the end, it was a deadlock, and I knew that whatever move I made next would result in my ultimate demise. I just could not regain that power loss early on.

sigh

Well, at least it was fun. Now I am going to be up in the wee hours of the morning doing other things. :)