Starting with the Queen

Fair enough.

The elimination of my opponents queen at the cost of my own.Is often at the top of my list of priorities.And, the beast time for me to do this is early in the game when she's most vulnerable. If i were to try and accomplish this with my knight and bishop. I would risk losing the pieces which i am trying to protect!

Hi, Asche.  

I enjoyed our earlier games, btw.  :)

I think the bottom line is that as a novice player myself, I've come to think of the early queen as a basic chess lesson.  Being able to "see" it coming and able to properly defend it are two entirely different things.  Until I am able to properly defend it by rote, in the manner that many here have suggested, I am doomed to fail by that wretched queen.  I lose to people WAY, WAY better than me routinely, and frankly, as long as they don't mind, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Unfortunately, I do have SOME pride, so I try to play my level and score some points now and again.  That means I need to learn how to handle that wretched early queen, because it's the 1200-1350 standard and >1000 live crowd who will pull the early queen.  I suppose that means that once you stop seeing her, you really have improved!  :)

Good luck, Asche!

Amy :)

Hey, Amy.

I enjoyed our games too and I hope you won't mind playing me again sometime. Hopefully that way we can both improve.

I look forward to the day when I stop seeing the early queen--even more so if it's a mark of improvement. Perhaps I'm just being immature (I am a kid, after all) but I feel like my opponent isn't really trying when they throw their queen at me right off the bat. I don't like that feeling but I guess it's just one of my shortcomings as well as a reason for me to try harder and get better.

Thank you and good luck to you as well. Let's both try to reach a point where we stop seeing the early queen.