I’m an avid chess player and have been for many years. I play in tournaments and never turn down a game! Anyone here play? Do you have an official rating? If you’re not a chess player, do you play any other games?
I played casually when I was in junior high. I find that I’m not very good at it. I’d teach friends to play and they’d beat me every time. I sort of gave up.
Haven’t played seriously since my early youth, tho I never was more than average. I would undoubtedly get slaughtered by any 12 year old right now. Love to browse at chess sets tho, I could see collecting those if you had the room and money. Now wargaming, I used to really get into that. Still have a large collection of classics from Avalon Hill and SPI.
I played a lot when I was younger. I haven’t played much in a while. I am pretty good in that I beat most casual players I come up against, but a tourney vet would probably wipe the floor with me! It’s my favorite game, though.
I love the game, love to play, typically have no one to play it with. I am not very good, I just really love the game, win or lose. Ken
I’m like the game but I’m bad at it. I’m more of a Go player.
i enjoying playing as well … but lack the expert moves or strategy to play with a “game plan” … more reactive and hunting the King …
I love chess, backgammon and go, play all 3 regularly. Stefan
I play chess very casually. Most opponents with any understanding of opening strategy can pummel me handily. However, I am glad to see there are some Go players on here. I play Go every chance I get; I never turn down a game. I’m somewhere around 10k, though I’ve never been officially ranked. Me and my friends spend many a fine evening playing go and sharing and sampling a vast collection of fine snuffs!
I used to play chess when I was a kid but I was only average at best, but I do like war games and I think Risk is the best board game there is
I play chess, but I only with friends and family and, apart from at Christmas, that’s nearly always online. We’re all dreadful at it, but we’re similarly dreadful, and that’s what makes it worth playing.
I enjoy playing every now and then, but I’ll stick with monopoly lol. Just dont have the brains I guess…
^ intelligence will only get you so far in chess. I’ve lost to people I would never consider smart or ‘brainy’ but they spent the time learning chess (memorization, reading, whatever) and got good.
Never heard of Go before. Googled it and it looks interesting. Thinking about getting a cheap $10 set for my man cave in the garage to play with the boys while smoking pipe and snuffing.
Never played Go, but always wanted to after reading the pulp fiction epic, Shibumi. The book rather condescendingly compares chess with Go, stating that chess is to the mercantile western mind what Go is to the philosopher. Used to play a great deal of chess at club level. Highlight of my chess life was beating (on the fourth attempt) a chess master playing blind on Christmas Eve 1978. I played the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian Defence. One admires the feat behind the famous picture of Alekhine - who toppled Capablanca in 1927 - playing blind against twenty-eight Grand Masters in a simultaneous exhibition in 1925. He won 22, drew 3 and lost 3. How on earth can someone keep mental track of twenty-eight simultaneous games? To mere mortals such mental feats are nothing short of miraculous. And who can ever forget the Spassky/Fischer Cold War contest in 1972, politicised as a battle between Soviet communism and western liberal democracy. Such was the perceived importance that progress was reported in the news every day. Ironically Fischer won the pivotal 13th match using Alekhine’s Defense, named after the great Russian master who invented it.
that is cause 22 of them played the same gambits. Of course I don’t know what I’am talking about.
@PhilipS I was inspired to learn to play Go after I watched the movie Pi. I have not dedicated nearly enough time to learning to play it well but I like the play the casual game with someone else who is as bad as I am.
@PhilipS Capablanca beating all those masters in a simul is actually not that hard to believe. I recall reading an interview with him once. Someone asked him how many moves he saw in advance- to which he replied “Only one… but the right one.” One might approach each game with even the freshest of minds…
I’m terrible at chess, but enjoy playing. I used to play go on Yahoo’s game page, but I would basically get slaughtered every time. I’d love to have someone around my ability to play with while I got the hang of the game.
I love the romance and literature of the game and have had bouts of mania for it. The best players start of naturally talented and then master the huge literature. I haven’t devoted enough time to it to be any good, and probly don’t have the right equipment. I recently played an elderly chap (a devotee) who’d had trial for England and all that. Hmm. Sad that computers can now beat the very best. Singularity Near. Cautionary tales of the incomparable Morphy having conversations with lamp posts, in Boston I think, having quit the game and an early age, like Fischer, who was also a bit odd.