Ron's chess-playing skills

[olivierfouquet2000]

No: HPFGUIDX 85828

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Aurelius Orionus <orionus2 at y...> wrote:
> > Geoff:
> > Speaking as someone who was sufficiently good many 
> > years ago to hold down a board position in my
> College 
> > team, I find it difficult to see how someone can 
> > reconstruct the game in PS from the sketchy evidence
> 
> > provided. Only on about six occasions does the 
> > narrative refer to a specific move and, often, the 
> > move is vaguely described. Then we have comments
> that
> > Ron darted round the board fending off white's 
> > attacks or that several pieces were taken. I don't 
> > think even my logic could put together the game.
> 
> Relatively new member to the forum, and this thread
> caught my eye also, probably because I am somewhat
> interested in chess and as a fan of Ron and
> chess-playing!Ron, I was shocked to read all this
> mumbo-jumbo about him being horrible when in the books
> he is clearly made out to be a very good chessplayer.
> 
> I agree with your assessment that there is very little
> in PS that could be pieced together.  Actually the
> narative in PS makes it sound like Ron kicks a bit of
> butt.  As you mentioned above, he was down a lot of
> pieces and decided to go around and clean up a bit,
> which doesn't happen much in chess. :)
> 
> 

I am the one who said for the first time that Ron could be a bad chess-player. But I 
think I was not clear enough. What I meant is that if we are trying to take literally the 
little indications we have about the game, we can deduce that both players seem to 
play, not necessarily badly, but at least highly unusually. On the other hand, I firmly 
believe that JKR intended Ron to be a superb chess player. Two possible explanations 
are :
1) Wizard chess is different from ordinary chess (the one I favor based on canon).
2) JKR did not try to describe an actual game (and that is perfectly ok with me).

Once again I would be happy  to share chess evidence with anyone interested, but off-
list as it is not about HP anymore in my mind.

Be sure I did not mean the books are supposed to give us the impression Ron is bad.

And thanks to Geoff for pointing me a false assumption in my line of reasoning. 

Olivier