Samurai Knight had a brief sit in the throne as Secretary Knight. He has
passed the sceptre on to none other than Tacticus Maximus. Treat them well, Tacticus, and thank you Samurai for taking a turn sitting on the egg. The 'Chess is crack' image is an homage to Samurai Knight.
I think I've successfully made the transition from chess-as-obsession to chess-as-hobby. It is quite nice. I gained a lot of tactical skills doing the Circles, and because the Circles took me so damned long (see
Blog Highlites) I was lucky enough to learn a lot of other stuff along the way, from basic openings, endgames, to middlegame strategy, among other things. I no longer feel the urge to "study" chess in any disciplined way, and am pretty happy with my performance levels in chess, which by any objective measure in the actual chess community, are not impressive(probably around 1400 or so at ICC), but less unimpressive than when I started (950 at ICC). So, the guilt is gone, but the fun is still there (though admittedly with less pronounced highs and lows).
In the next week I'll put up what should be my last post for a while: I plan on making a goodbye video. We'll see if the experiment works. At that point, instead of trying to keep the Knights list updated, I'll put a link to the
Knights Errant FAQ page, which should be up to date. I will continue to lurk and comment at blogs, though. There is a lot of great content out there!
