subject: How to Shake the Winter Blues by Playing Checkers [print this page] How to Shake the Winter Blues by Playing Checkers
Do you remember getting the winter blues as a child? I can almost guarantee that you cannot. The reason you did not get the winter blues as a child was because you loved the winter as much as spring and summer. What happened? You got older and found yourself a lot more in demand, you now have a job and you may be a parent or spouse. Now, what you have to do is to learn to use all of these demands as an advantage.
One of my many memories as a child was playing checkers against my Dad. I cannot remember who used to win the most, but guessing, I would say it was probably Dad. Checkers is a very fun game, a lot of people think it's a silly or easy game, especial when compared to playing chess, but it's not, checkers takes great concentration and skill to become proficient at.
If you are not familiar with checkers, it is played on a board that is laid out in a checkered pattern, of light and dark colored squares, the game is played on the dark squares only. The checker pieces are usually red and black, red always starts the game by moving first. A checker may only move or advance one square at a time, by moving diagonally. If one of your checkers is next to one of your opponent's checkers and the square beyond it is empty, you then jump over the opponent's checker. The opponent's checker is then removed from the board, sometimes, you can have multiple jumps within a single turn.
When a checker makes it to the opposite far end of the board, that piece becomes what is called a King, and one of your opponents captured checkers is placed on top of the king piece, so it becomes two checkers high. Besides the normal forward moves, a king can also move backwards.
Checkers is great fun to play, and it's easy to learn, but difficult to master, so whenever you find yourself with nothing to do during the long, cold winter months, why not get out a checker set and practice becoming better at it. If you don't have someone to play against, you can simply play against yourself. Or, if you have the internet, there are many online free versions of checkers, that you can play against a computer or virtual opponent. Checkers not only helps pass the time in the winter, it's a great activity to help shake the winter blues.
There is a website that describes numerous activities and other methods to help eliminate the Winter Blues, this website is called: Winter Activities - and it may be found at this url: http://www.winter-activities.com
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