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The Chess Thread


MKnight82

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I find it interesting that Chess is having somewhat of a resurgence.  I imagine the popularity of the Queen's Gambit on Netflix has made an impact, plus just COVID and being stuck at home in general has helped.  Maybe its that there are interesting Grandmasters to follow like Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura.  Whatever the reason I had already found myself playing more chess before this boom started recently.  Me and some neighbors had made Chess.com profiles over a year ago and have been playing regularly on the app.  

I never had any formal training and just played the game with my dad growing up as a kid.  I probably didn't play the game for over 10 years until about a year ago.  The vast resources online for strategy and theory make it so much more accessible now compared to back in the day when you had to read through books.  I generally have just been playing randomly and acting on what I thought was the best move but more recently have started studying openings and early game theory.  

I don't really know what my rating is.  I'm currently only 1160 on chess.com but that's because I only played 3 of my neighbors for the past year, so I never really went up in rating (I generally beat most of them 90% of the time, but that has hammered their ratings so I barely get a gain when I beat them but my rating gets hammered when I lose to them).  In the past month I've switched to playing the neighbors on a Balanced / Odds game, which stacks the deck against me for their advantage.  This has an added bonus of not being a rated game.  So the past few weeks or so I've started concentrating on trying to build up my rating.  I've been consistently beating people in the 1300s but generally struggle with anyone 1500+.  I would imagine this won't change until I better prepare by memorizing some opening strategy.  

Anyways, anyone else been playing Chess lately?  I would be curious what others do to improve their game.  I've been watching youtube instructional videos and I think that's been helping.  

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I played against my brother and dad a lot growing up, and after my brother moved out I got a game called The Chessmaster to play whenever I felt like a game. My son has picked the game up recently and is getting better, he beat my wife not to long ago and reminds her pretty frequently.  lol

 

 

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If only wizards chess was real...

But in all seriousness I haven’t gotten on that train yet I played as a kid whenever I had someone to play with but haven’t touched a chess piece in years. 

What’s a good spot to play online? Any suggestions? 
 

Maybe I’ll give it a try. 
 

I have noticed a lot of streamers suddenly playing chess too so maybe that show is the reason why. 

Edited by mattyice0401
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6 hours ago, mattyice0401 said:

If only wizards chess was real...

But in all seriousness I haven’t gotten on that train yet I played as a kid whenever I had someone to play with but haven’t touched a chess piece in years. 

What’s a good spot to play online? Any suggestions? 
 

Maybe I’ll give it a try. 
 

I have noticed a lot of streamers suddenly playing chess too so maybe that show is the reason why. 

Chess.com is a free app for your phone.

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Just now, Matts4313 said:

Nope. I am not invested enough to care about it. Outside my match in survivor, I havent played in over 15 years. 

But if you ever wanna jump on an online site, I will attempt to not embarrass myself. 

Chess.com app is free just DL to your phone and create a profile.

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