Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Chess, Poker, and Procrastination

So it seems quite a few chess players are busy these days playing poker. My friend NM Eugene Yanayt is on a poker cruise right now having qualified for it on party poker. I talked to him online today and he mentioned there were a couple of GMs in the tournament. Apparently Walter Browne and Jan Gustafsson a 2600 from Germany are on the cruise. I asked him to challenge them to a side game of blitz, but he said the only set on the ship was a big one by the hot tub where the pawns were just small bishops. I personally used to play a bit of poker myself. I gave it up because I was falling behind in school and didn't want to give up chess, but quite a few people seem to make the other choice.

Both of these activities can suck up a good deal of your time if you're not careful. I'm generally of the opinion that any time spent on chess cannot be a waste, but sometimes things get put off until the last minute that would be better done at an earlier time. However, some people ask me where in my busy schedule I find time to study as much chess as I do and the simple answer is procrastination. When I'm not doing my homework, essay, or exam, I can be studying chess. I think it's quite effective, a lot better use of time than my former marathons of staring at the wall.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Something interesting happened at our company recently. There were daily poker tournaments at lunch for the longest time.

Recently I held an office chess tournament (still ongoing) and it's attracted a lot of attention. I haven't played poker since, and there are others who play chess at lunch now as often or more often than poker.

Interesting that the two have this common group of players...