How well are you at playing over all? Or are you one of them whose never learned how to play yet?
I…ah…can beat 10-year-olds and drunks.
Apparently that is all. I once thought I was pretty good, but a few go rounds on Yahoo and some computer game (where I repeatedly got stomped on the Easy level) showed me otherwise.
Why? Do you want to kick my ass too? 
I used to be pretty good for an amateur with no training at all and a casual interest in the game. In fact, I don’t remember ever being beat; but then I never played anyone with true talent.
I lettered in high school. Yeah, that’s right. I lettered. In chess.
Bow before my geekiness.
I’m okay, but I get worse as the game goes on. I have trouble landing killing blows. I tend to rely on strong defense, picking off a big peice, and then trading my way to the endgame. I’d guesstimate my rating as around 1600.
I haven’t played in something like five years, but I remember being pretty bad at it. My cousins are little chess prodigies and could beat me in less than a minute.
I play the Chinese/Japanese game of Go. No computer’s beaten even a mid level amateur at this game yet!
Suck at Chess, though.
I, also lettered in Chess. Won my conference regular season at 1st board, too (each “team” had five people on it, you put your best player at 1st board, second best at 2, etc, so your team’s best player always plays the other teams best player). My rating never got above 1600 (I was brutalized in my rating-basing games freshman year), but I could routinely challenge 2000-level players.
But I haven’t played seriously in years.
I can play. I know how. I used to think I was not bad.
Until my six year old son started beating me. He’s been playing since he was 3½. We have Harry Potter to thank for that. As a matter of fact Santa brought him the replica set from the first HP movie for Christmas 2002. It was his favorite gift. He was four at the time.
I have still never learned how. I hear it’s bad for the nerd cred to admit this. I never had that much nerd cred to start with, so I’m not too broken up about it. Still, I think I would like to learn how to play.
I’m extremely bad at it. I think that’s because I have absolutely no motivation to win, for some reason.
After about five minutes of chess, I get an overwhelming urge to go make a painting, play the guitar, make up silly nonsense verses with a child, or something.
I think I remember what way each piece can move. I like the horses.
No, I don’t play. Dad taught me eons ago, sorta. I learned the basic rules, but nothing about strategy. It got old losing all the time, so I don’t play.
My Dad tried to teach me. I remember the moves and I’ve been able to play/teach with little kids. Other than when a little kid asks, I don’t play: many people have told me that Dad was very patient training them, but it sure didn’t apply to his kids. I never learned to enjoy it.
When I play and my waist-high opponent makes a mistake, I let him know right there… I ask him questions about the move, so that he figures out at least part of “why” it’s wrong on his own. That way he’s less likely to repeat it at another game. That usually means the game lasts a lot longer and is left unfinished, but they love it and so do I.
The child has been beating me for years. Basicaly I suck at chess. I am formidable at backgammon though.
I believe to be good at chess you have to have a mathematical type brain. I don’t have one of them.
I was fair to middlin’ back in the 60’s-70’s when I played.
Recently I read a column by Shelby Lyman, TV Chess Master and TV commentator of the Fischer era who currently writes a Sunday column in my local paper. In one he said something like “…with computers so ubiquitous among today’s young people, teen agers have already played more games than Fischer and others ever did at his peak.” (Shelby might have included today’s grand masters as well, but I’m not sure.)
It might be true.
I once saw a hold 'em playing teen interviewed on TV. In the background his computer monitor had six windows open to six different hold 'em games. It’s a dead solid certainty that kids are doing the same with chess.
And the rosters in both games are swelling with very young and extraordinarily expert players.
Please. Someone start a thread about your most satisfying chess triumph. It doesn’t have to be by the numbers. A generalized account will do.
But if you’ve got a scored game you want to brag about, I’ll be happy to set up the board and relive it with you.
Here’s what I mean by ‘generalized’ and it’s not my game, but Bobby Fischer’s.
It was a world championshp game between Fischer and [forgotten challenger] that Shelby was narrating. We were in the end game with just the knigs and a few pawns still on the board, and it was Fischer’s turn to move.
While Bobby thought, Shelby and guests admitted unabashedly that they had no clue as to what he was up to was up to. They hemmed and hawed over what to do. They examined in atomic level detail every single possibility - except one - and, of course, that was the pawn Fischer moved.
Suddenly the light dawned for all the TV experts and simultaneously, their jaws dropped (as did mine and everyone else tuned in), and promptly they all shit their pants. It was a stunningly brilliant move, and the game was over. The opponent might have even resigned at this point. I don’t recall. But Bobby won it.
Great stuff. I got to like Shelby Lyman a lot, and I still read his column every Sunday, even though I don’t play any more.
I’m terrible at chess. I never learned any strategies and my own playing style can be described as “Well, I haven’t moved this piece in a while… might as well do something with it”.
The thing is, I know I suck, and when I’m down to the point where I have two or three pieces left, I know I’m going to lose and I get bored out of my mind waiting for my opponent to checkmate me. I like to end it then and there, but every so often I’ll play with a jackass that has to end it “officially” and gets all curmudgeonly when I just want to quit playing. Argh.
You are absolutely entitled to resign whenever you feel like it.
Tell the curmudgeons to grow up.
My father taught me when I was a kid–never got very good at it though. I’m not a strategist. I was once given an electronic chess set as a gift, but never beat the forth level on it (for compaision, there were 64 levels). I used to play quite often against some friends in high school, but I haven’t had a game in years.
My dad taught me to play, but he won’t play with me anymore because he says I’m a sore loser. This isn’t true. He’s afraid I might beat him now that I’m not ten. We have the same argument about poker.
-Lil
I used to be mediocre, but the concentration needed to really play right is a tough thing. But, way back when, it was such fun to get challenged by the annoying know-it-all president of the school chess club, and then draw him right into a Sucker’s Mate. I was not invited back. 