Can't you just Leave Them Hanging?

Wow! I think Spiffe is the leader of an entirely new movement in blocking, quite beyond windows7, and David Neffe. Blocking a whole group at once is totally cutting edge blocking!

blocking with lasers

and sharks!

and hillbillies

So LisaV, there were some friends over at my home today, and there was this guy, kind of cute, that one of my friends brought with her. So we're talking, and he sees my chess set, and asks if I play. I say yes, and he starts setting up the pieces. Well, my roommate asks him if he's any good at it. And he says "I'm pretty good". Then my friends start bragging on me, you know, cause they don't really know too much about chess, but they know quite a bit about trash talking His face gets all red, and he just gets really quiet. He stops setting up the pieces, and decides he doesn't want to play. They leave, and my friend calls me up and tells me that he didn't want to be beat by a girl! It was quite amusing

Christ.

So, you two set up a date then.  Roll eyes.

Maybe he'll come back if you tell him you suck at Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Funny.  Chess as a weeding device.  The guy can be cute and nice, but if he can't stomach losing to a girl, you know immediately he's not date material.

lol  funny yet pathetic experience

Well, whenever someone says they're "pretty good" at chess, my experience has been, that they're not very good Maybe they beat all their friends, but their friends aren't very good either

Perhaps when a new guy tells you he's pretty good at chess, he's really saying, 'I think you're cute, so don't get too upset when I beat you in 10 moves.'

It'd be funny if, next time, your friends shut up and let you play, if nothing else than to see the look on the guy's face when he discovers you can actually play.  :)

 You must've been related to Bobby Fischer, because he was into crushing egos too.

I agree, my friends really should have shut up(though they never do), and let us play. But people who really play chess, I don't think they ever say that they're "pretty good". I couldn't. When you lose a game thousands of times, and watch people play, like the masters, and you don't understand most of what you're seeing until you sit down and have a computer explain it to you, it's waaaay too humbling to declare you're any good at all! I really didn't like the 'I don't want to be embarrassed by losing to someone with boobs' POV, but, it's not like these people, and that attitude, is an anomaly!

 I've heard that if you set your group country to Mongolia, it blocks Team 54

Chuck Norris plays for Mongolia.

I suggested this once, but Chess.com didn't implement it.

Of course you suggested this

 LOL

My standard answer, when confronted with a situation like you describe:  "I know how the pieces move."  That's as far as I can go without feeling like a damned liar.

It's funny, though, how often that answer makes the challenger's eyes light up before attempting a scholar's mate.

"It's funny, though, how often that answer makes the challenger's eyes light up before attempting a scholar's mate."

"Scholar's mate" is a term that I have always thought to be something of a misnomer.

Well, what do you say when someone asks if you are good at chess ? It's not an easy question to answer actually.