When you are playing chess with someone else, and always thought that chess actually was a boring game to play with someone who needs more than 5 seconds to finish his move, you might want to have a look at this few hints how to have fun while playing a game that noone dared to change in more than 5000 years.

You've seen this 08/15 chess figures a hundred times in your life - they are made out of wood (or persipan in some short-living, sun-melting variants that seem to consist of so much sugar, you still wonder why they are allowed to call it persipan), the king is about 78mm high and the horses always look as if someone was forced to shape them with his toe-nails for 12 hours a day.
Too make the game much more fun, go and follow the following rules.

• Create your own figures - any material will do, if sugar does.
• Break up with the classical paintings in white and black. Chess programs showed us that red and blue will do as well.
• Don't be so narrow while painting the tiles onto the board. Throw away your ruler and be creative!
• Connect the figures of your opponent, so that if they move their pawn, the bishop is being dragged behind.
• Ever thought about fascinating things you can do with magnets? Try out, you'll get surprised how many times you can win by technical wits.
• If you notice a hair something alike on the board in the midst of the game, just blow it away with all the might your lungs have. If some figures fall down, just put them where you want them to be.

You've ever senn some chess-players on TV or at a contest? You know, they're wearing plain cloth, have short haircuts, don't speak a word in an hour (and then it's "checkmate") and have invented the opposite of the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) - the so called CME (Checkmated Eye)...

And as you already presume, they can't be very happy with this, so cheer them up. Here are some of my ways to do so:

• Turn on some real loud music, it's better than silence for hours.
• Tell your opponent everything about your opinion on onion rings in combination with pine-apples. And be sure to ask him if he'd like to try it sometime.
• Tickle him/her with your feet beneath the table, while staring concentrated onto the figures.
• Whistle! Just like Monthy Python advised you...
• Ask if he's comfortable every second move. Bring some cushions, cool drinks (with ice cubes) and the local newspaper and anything else you can think of.
• Special move: Ventriquolism

If your opponent doesn't react to your efforts, try to change your own behaviour.

• Make some phone calls with imaginary persons. Discuss with them if God really likes white paintings on the street and how the weather in South-Vietnam has developed over the last 20 years.
• Make hasty moves while your opponent just looked aside, and hope that he'll suspect you of cheating.
• Go to the toilet while he's planning his checkmate, sing a song of which you don't the text loudly, and do not come back for at least ten minutes.
• Do some homework. Thinking aloud over infinitesimal-problems helps your opponent to concentrate.
• When you move on of your figures (don't do that too often or too fast), colourize the movement with some creepy sounds. When it comes to a battle between two figures, make some special move like they did years ago in battlechess. Some extra tools or weapons will help in making a big show of every single pawn-war.
• Comment everything your opponent does, as if it was a historical act. Just imagine you're not playing chess, but you're making war against Napoleon. Be imaginative - anything from dying soldiers who just ran with severe wounds from the battlefield to give their final words before death to their commandor, up to posh queens who complain about their ever-fighting men, while watching the fight with bloodlust, will do.
• Do a really silly move after thinking for a really long time with your most worried face, and then grin like hell at your opponent and do not even look at the board anymore. You know, they always tell, chess is half strategy and half psychology...
• After every move put all the figures exactly into the middle of their fields and make them all look straight ahead. Noone can start a war when everyone looks at the king instead of looking at the enemies.

Everyone knows that chess is an ooold game. But, all the newspaper tell us we're living in a new world with new rules, and nothing will be like it has been yesterday, so start to change the world with some influence on the rules for chess.

• If your opponent has an advantage, start discussing why this figure can only move just like it can, and not otherwise. Make some good proposals for changing of the rules to let the king move two fields in one turn, or something else that will help you to not loose you figures.
• Choose the black (or blue) colour and make the first move. Letting white start everytime speaks of racism, doesn't it?
• Introduce some new elements like a waterfall you've been painitng onto the baord beforehand, and tell your opponent that after stepping into the waterfall your bishop can move just like a queen.
• Do never forget the rule - anything is allowed, as long as the opponent doesn't notice or doesn't complain about it.

Now, you've learned the basic techniques to play chess without getting bored in weeks, so just try every single trick and combinate them. If someone has some good additions, please tell us, after all we're all still learning.