In lieu of a carriage return, the paragraph marker is denoted herein by ...(*)... I have a wonderful spouse within the context of a monogamous relationship and do not seek any romantic connections. All I am here for is chess! ...(*)... I have been playing chess since 1974. My first and favorite chess book was "Chess Strategy" by Edward Lasker (pub. 1911) and taught me the basics in QP and KP openings with clear and concise text. This book is available for free download at Project Gutenberg here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5614 However, the important chess diagrams are not adequately represented in the HTML document. While Gutenberg is sometimes a useful site, a beginner might be better off buying a chess book. I would suggest "Modern Chess Strategy," the superior revised edition published in 1950, of which many inexpensive used copies are available at Amazon: http://amzn.com/0679140220 ...(*)...
I do not own any chess software, although in the past I've dabbled with Fritz and CM, but I find computer chess boring and pointless. The computer can win every time if one sets the difficulty high enough. I only play against humans, either online or OTB. ...(*)...
I like to play unusual openings and do not care what the "received opinion" is on any opening. If you think my opening can be refuted then have at it, within the time limit allotted! I relish disabusing opening snobs of their prejudices! ...(*)...
I am familiar with several other chess sites including Chess Cube and FIRC. Chess Cube has two good points over chess.com, such as an eye-saving black background as opposed to the blinding bright white on chess.com, and a VIP membership that doesn't "preapprove." I can't purchase any VIP on chess.com because they want me to preapprove a yearly membership charge for the rest of my life, in direct opposition to my common sense. However, chess.com has great groups, including gay groups, is gay-friendly, and has Vote Chess, none of which is true of Chess Cube. Chess.com also has a better service overall, not dropping connections due to technical problems or losing player histories, unlike Chess Cube. Although I had a VIP membership on Chess Cube, they lost over a year's worth of game history for all users site-wide, including hundreds of blitz and standard games of mine. They did not at any time permit users to download a comprehensive archive of the game history. FIRC has a renegade admin who bans people without explanation. I am one of the banned people, so I never will use FIRC again and regret that I ever tried, because it does require considerable effort to even get started on that antiquated system. IRC I've never tried, and it may be okay, but seems a bit expensive from what I observed. ...(*)...
On Chess.com, I like to play blitz (not bullet), standard, and on rare occasions, against opponents of equal strength, games as long as one hour per side, but usually not longer. ...(*)...
I like Vote Chess, but have had to quit a number of games in which team members were not participating but merely voting with little or no discussion, which defeats the purpose of vote chess. If there is to be no discussion of moves, then there really is no advantage to playing vote chess over solitary chess. ...(*)...
I do not join groups just for the sake of joining groups. I only join groups of an ideological cast that I believe in. ...(*)...
Oh, one final comment--they should allow paragraph markers in the profile editor!