Getting Started

I haven't seriously played chess since I was around 10 years old.  What has sparked my recent intrest was a game of chess I played with Joe; he had been bragging about being on a 3-game winning streak and they had intriguiged me the night before when he and Kat played a quick game and I had been thinking about playing again that whole day just to see where I was at.  So going into this game I fully expecting to lose in roughly 7-10 moves, so I adjusted my stratagy appropriately by trying not putting any of my guys into harms way and watching carefully every move that Joe makes so I could always figure out what he was trying to do and not worry about my own offensive stupiditty.  It was a long drawn out game(no timer) with lots of shifts in moods and a lot of me cursing my self defeats.  I lasted as long as I could and I came to a point where all of my pieces on the right side of the board were pinned down and about to get worked over the very next turn!  I thought "Oh well you did the best that you could, it had to end sometime," when I realized that his entire back row was empty save his king and I had a rook covering his escape to the next row because he had a pawn to his diagonal right and a knight right in front of him, all I had to do was move my queen three spaces to the right and then all the way down to checkmate town.  Really my only challenge was not alerting Joe to winning combination.  Joe takes a Knight which puts him in position to take either a castle or a pawn, Joe then says "I'm messing your shit up over here.  What are you going to do about it?"  So I slide my queen over not answering his gloating question and making sure to keep my focus on the chaos to the right.  He gets excited by being able to take my castle and all I'm thinking is you have no idea about the doom that awaits you.  I put my queen into position and say " I think that's checkmate."  Needless to say I still have bragging rights.