Any Chess Players Out There?

[EntityX]

I just renewed my membership to the Internet Chess Club. I let it expire and haven't played any internet chess for something like a year. I go through phases when I'll play a lot and then I'll just not play at all for a while.

Even when I'm not playing any chess I like to solve chess problems. I like solving mate in 2 and mate in 3. I can systematically solve any mate in 2 or 3 that I want. Mate in 4 and up I usually don't use any particular fixed method but I can solve them if I put enough time in.

I'm EntityX on the Internet Chess Club also. It's $ 34.95 for a 6 month membership. http://www.chessclub.com

If you want to try out internet chess you can do it for free at the Free Internet Chess Server. http://www.freechess.org

There's also Chess Here
www.chesshere.com
A free membership with them will get you 5 games a day.

I played some tournament chess back in the 90's. My peak USCF rating was 1779. That's B+ level. So above me there are A players (1800- 1999), Experts (2000-2199), Masters (2200-2399) and Senior Masters(2400 and up). Among senior masters are International Masters or IMs and Grandmasters or GMs. So I'm just a small fish in the sea of chess players but when I play I enjoy it.

My peak rating on ICC was 1936 back in 2007. I thought, wow, I'm getting a lot better. Someone told me that an ICC rating is about 150 points above a USCF rating so 1936 ICC would equate to 1786 USCF. So I guess I'm about like I was a while back.

[Shaggy Hiker]

You'd clobber me, and I wasn't too bad. Oddly, my small HS back in the early 80's had two players up around 2100 (one just above, one just below), one around 1800, one around 1600, and a couple 1400 level players. That's a fair amount of power for a small school with no focus on anything, let alone chess. It was just chance. I wasn't good enough to be the fifth seat in that school.

Also, against the stereotype, some of those players were good athletes, too.

[visualAd]

I can solve a mate in 27 problem while sitting on the loo. Trust me, that is not a long time

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

I can solve a mate in whatever number of moves you want! As long as i'm in control of both sides of the board, obviously.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

I can play tiddlywinks

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

Noooooo...

[BillGeek]

What's 'chess'?

[mendhak]

Replace all chess references with MMORPG references, and you'd be scoffed at.

[kregg]

I'd still scoff at someone for knowing how to play chess.

[mrmojorisin]

All i know is that if you king falls over, you lose. What a rule!! That should be true for real life. If your king falls over, he loses....something?!?!

[EntityX]

I can solve a mate in 27 problem while sitting on the loo. Trust me, that is not a long time

If that's true then I'm impressed. It can take me quite a while to solve a mate in three if I apply my systematic approach. Sometimes I'll just analyze and check out those first moves that look like they would lead to mate and that's usually a more interesting way to solve the problem. Other times I'll run through every first move on the board until I discover the "key" move which can be rather tedious for a mate in three not as much work for a mate in two and for a mate in four and above it would really be a lot of work.

[oceanebelle]

I like playing Minesweeper.

vista's chess titans is cool btw. I couldn't win even at the easier setting but at least I know all the moves.

I'll try mahjong some time.

[Siddharth Rout]

vista's chess is pathetic (whatever level)... Not that I am very good in chess but I have never lost to Vista at least

[mrmojorisin]

I like playing Minesweeper.

vista's chess titans is cool btw. I couldn't win even at the easier setting but at least I know all the moves.

I'll try mahjong some time.

Have you played that vista game where you have to draw the lines to deflect the balls! Thats a good one!

Chess is a great game, i wish i had the time to play it!

[kleinma]

I played on redhotpawn for a while.. not sure what you get with a $70 a year membership, but redhotpawn was totally free to play online against people. I was never really that good though. I am ok, but I generally don't think far enough ahead, which is really what chess is all about...

[EntityX]

I think that impatience can be a great enemy in chess. When I start to move fast I lose a lot. If you're a GM and you want to play blitz chess ok. But if you want to improve and play high level chess you should take your time.

It's good to look at least at every first move on the board that you can make and that your opponent can make in response. The deeper you can see the better you can play.

One of the top players in the world right now is a 17 year old from Norway named Magnus Carlsen. http://www.chess.com/article/view/magnus-carlsen

In the fide top 100 July list for men the USA has only 4 players. Russia has I think 25. Our top players right now are all imports. They were born somewhere else and moved to the US.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Russians are crazy about chess, Americans are not. Makes sense that they'd be imports.

It's good to look at least at every first move on the board that you can make and that your opponent can make in response. The deeper you can see the better you can play.

Some studies of chess grand masters show that they only evaluate one or two different moves at any time. They just pick the right one or two. There's been lots of fascinating studies on what makes great chess players in the last few years. To sum up the findings: Lots and lots of experience. They don't look deeper or think more logically, they just have a huge amount of experience and can match any pattern against patterns they have seen before.

[kregg]

Russians are crazy about chess, Americans are not. Makes sense that they'd be imports.

[CADman]

I used to play Kasparov chess but no longer have the disk. It gave me a rating of about 1100. I'm not very good but I enjoyed his 'Just what I would have done' and 'Oh, I see your point'. Does anyone remember one of the original computer chess programs written?
It's called 'Chess.exe', written in 1984 using less than 10K!! It had 6 look ahead levels, used B/W graphics on a low res screen. I still have it and, still can't beat it. The flashing cursor is really fast but is still playable on modern processors.
This was inside the code: CHESS88 V2.0 - A CHESS PROGRAM FOR THE IBM PERSONAL COMPUTER BY DON BERG.

Cadman

[BillGeek]

Sheesh... I still remember battle chess for my ol' 386. Them were the days, eh?

[mendhak]

For you, perhaps. We weren't there. Or alive.

[Nightwalker83]

I just renewed my membership to the Internet Chess Club. I let it expire and haven't played any internet chess for something like a year. I go through phases when I'll play a lot and then I'll just not play at all for a while.

Yeah, I like playing chess but I haven't played it for a while. I used to have an account on that internet club but my account ran out also. I can't be bother renewing it since I don't really use it.

[EntityX]

I'm back in my playing internet chess mode again and am enjoying it. I'm constantly solving chess problems but I'm not always playing chess but I am now. I let my Internet Chess Club membership expire a while back. That would cost me $ 40 for a 6 month membership which is what I always purchased. I haven't renewed it but am using FICS or Free Internet Chess Server which as the name suggests is free. I recommend it to anyone that's looking for internet chess to give it a try if you're interested and use Babas Chess for the chess interface which is a free download.

http://www.freechess.org

My handle at the Internet Chess Club was EntityX but I decided to use a different handle at FICS. I'm KanatolyAsparov at FICS. That's the first name of Karpov which is Anatoly and the last name Kasparov from the other world champ Garry Kasparov with the K of Kasparov stuck at the begining. When I was using the Internet Chess Club I got a kick out of some of the user names. One was FishyBobber, a transformation of the name Bobby Fisher. That cracked me up so that inspired me to try something similar.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'm constantly solving chess problems but I'm not always playing chess but I am now.

Considering the existential angst you displayed in this sentence, your mangling of names is quite understandable.

[honeybee]

LOL.

For the record I played chess at University level, winning the national University Championship for our team (I played on the second board).

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[wossname]

As Zapp Brannigan would say...

"In the game of chess you can never let your opponent see your pieces."

[honeybee]

Bent Larsen, when asked why he preferred moving his Rook Pawns, answered: "You can always push the other when one stops!"

I remember reading in the BBC Master Series book about an incident where several grandmasters were gathered in a room, analysing the game between Korchnoi and Karpov. There was a heated debate going on, on whether luck had any part in a logical game such as Chess. Gligoric was the sole person to admit luck still played a big part, and was being duly ridiculed. As the game came to a turning point, all the grandmasters awarded the point to Korchnoi, seeing he had a forced mate in five. However with the next move, they gasped in horror as Korchnoi had completely missed the mate in five! He lost the game and subsequently the title match.

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[Spoo]

I like playing Minesweeper.

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[Bonker Gudd]

I represent Lork Blowey.

[wossname]

Do you guys remember how annoying Wesley Crusher was?