I first learned chess as a child - taught by my father, who as far as I can make out is a pretty good player. I played all the way through school, and was ... passable, never good. I find this game enormously frustrating and to be honest, I don't even like it much. I'm sure I'm not alone, so, anyone else out there who can't play, don't let it make you feel like some sort of intellectual misfit.

I married someone who has taken classes on the art of chess playing, who has learned chess theory, openings, strategies, manouvers and the like. The game is almost like a science, and apparently there is a lot you can learn. He's taught me a great deal, but the more I discover about chess, the less I find I like it. I think it depends a lot on who much you enjoy the notion of working with a large, but not infinite number of variables.

Why don't I like chess? I've been pondering this question for about a year. Technically, I should be bright enough to be able to play it, I can manipulate a reasonable amount of information, I can formulate strategies. I think part of my problem is that playing depends on being able to take in and asses a vast amount of visual information - something I am not so hot at. To play chess well, you must be able to comprehend the board, to look at what is going on and see the relationships between every piece. Each move alters that relationship and changes the possible actions. I will admit, that holding this much visual information in my mind is a struggle as I think predominantly in words. While you can to a certain extent play the person (most people can be unsettled in some way) there is less scope in chess than in many other games. My preference is for larger games with more players, where a combination of competition and assistance is required - chess is entirely confrontational in nature, and this reduces it's appeal for me.

Variant one, you take five chessboards, placing four round each side of the fifth. You ahve four players, each with a set of pieces and each starting on a seperate board. The idea is top get everyone else into checkmate. Once you are in checkmate, you cannot move your pieces until or unless another player releases you from the checkmate. It takes a long time, you really do need four sets of pieces that look different, but it's a lot more interesting because you have scope for working with people as well as against them.

If you hate chess, don't feel that you'r somehow wrong - you aren't alone, and it's not the best game on the face of the planet. It favour a certain style of thought and a good visual memory - not everyone has those. I find the best thing to do is play my husband at scrabble - I might not be the best at spelling, but I understand the board and have a knack for finding good words..... there's always a way o cheering yourself up if you can't play this particular board game, and beign good at chess does not necessarily mean you are any sort of super genius, it jsut means you have the sort of mind that works well for chess.