Chess

I’ve played chess recreationally for a bunch of years. I don’t remember when I first learned how to play, but I think I was in a chess club in elementary school. There weren’t very many other people in the club, but it was neat to learn the basics with other people using a chess board on a wall – it was a vertical hanging board that had little pockets so you could place the flat pieces without falling off (if that makes any sense). Anyways, I think our club had a mini tournament and I did pretty well. After elementary school, I didn’t pursue it any further, just playing with my family on occasion and perhaps a few times with my middle school and high school friends. My memory is pretty horrible when it comes to this sort of thing. In college, one of my roommates was really interested in chess. He had played when he was young as well and he actually competed in local tournaments. His enthusiasm for the game reignited my interest in the game and led me to play more, online and in person. I never beat him, but it was fun nevertheless. I find the puzzles / tactics of these chess websites really fun. lichess and chess.com have really nice puzzles that only require a few moves to complete, but they aren’t trivial. Also, they have a nice feature where they try to give you puzzles that match your chess “rating”. Nowadays, I spend more time playing these puzzles than I do against real people. I think that the puzzles have helped me think a bit more critically about the game, but I also feel that in a real game, I am unsure when I am in a puzzle scenario or not. This definitely arose when I recently played a high school friend in a game with a 10 minute time limit. I could definitely think of some good moves to play to take advantage of the board, but I wasn’t thinking quick enough to win. That is why I prefer the longer style of games. I plan to only play chess for fun, but we’ll see – if I do somehow unlock the secret of the game through these puzzles, I may consider playing more frequently.