When I was 7, my mom taught me how the pieces move and then we played together every week on a board my dad bought in Tijuana, Mexico before he left for a one year solo TDY to Turkey. I think my mom maybe won one game but never again :-) I would have gotten better, but I never knew any other kids that liked chess. A few years later we had moved to Washington state and one evening we had a dinner guest that was really good at chess and he spent an hour with me teaching me a few basic principles and the scholar's mate (4 move fools mate). I played sporatically in my teens once entering a small boyscout tournament and getting a silver medal for second place (but the number of entrance was few) I didn't start playing more regularly until after high school and had some roommates that liked chess. Some evening we'd play 20 games one after another--good times :-). In my mid 20s I met a guy name Richard Lavander who lived in the same complex as me. He was much better than me an and became my coach teaching me everyday with formal lessons and criticism of my games (tempo, strong & weak squares, development, forks, pins, discovered attacks, etc). After a few months, I went from never being able to beat him to always beating him, and this mad him so mad that he didn't want to be my friend or coach me anymore and he moved away and I never saw him again. Weird guy, but he did vastly improve my game. I played more regularly for the next years, entering tournaments (I won 2 tournament, proud of that, with about 20 entrants). I think I was playing at about a 1300 level, but then I stopped playing for a number of years and also had a small head injury and now don't seem to see things I used to see so well. So I'm playing about 1100 now. Chess is not as fun as it used to be for me, but I have been having some fun here on chess.com playing fast games.