News update, Oct 16, 2010:

I regret that I'm not able to take on any new games and that I couldn't complete some of the games in progress due to our son suffering from an aneurism which will require surgery. I'll be back on the board when the storm passes. Until then, hope you all practice up. Best regards and happy square dancing.

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Play philosophy: "Take your best shot." I encourage my "Online" opponents to seek and research the best move they can find while playing "Online Chess" with me. My logic, here, is that assisted games provide us both with a learning experience of seeking the best possible play, thus, avoiding many typical blunders that spoil good strategy play. To my thinking, this provides a teaching situation for us both.

On the other hand, if you want to go "one-on-one", then I use "Live Chess" to help me assess my personal improvement from my "Online Chess" research. I will not use any research-assist during any rated play, other than the "Analyze Board" option.

Some of you will no doubt view playing "Online Chess" with research as a form of cheating by typical chess standards, however, I have determined that we all learn best by researching and following the best possible expertise rather than continually making the same errors, repeatedly. I have found that unless I seek such improvement, my game falls into a rut where I need to find help. If my learning technique is unsuitable to you for any reason, merely request an unassisted "Online" game with me. This is my disclosure statement so as not to mislead or offend any of you as to my intentions to violate chess ethics or those of Chess.com. One last request... I find it is difficult to always respond within a 3 day time limit, so I ask any Online challengers that we please use the "5-day-move-setting" or more. I will likely make my move earlier than 5 days, however, this way, we preserve vacation-time-pauses. Thanks very much for visiting my site and taking time to read this. -- Stan Kern

Sir_Gawain