The internet definitely. I learned on a real set with my father, but as there aren't many opportunities for me to learn in person i was blase about it for years.
And then i started discovering online play, specifically FICS, and i found a way to grow in the game even without local opponents. Now i consider myself a student of the game, and my skill has improved dramatically.
I still have a long way to gothough.
My friend in 3rd grade got me started playing and i'm glad. I still play since chess is fun, competitive, a stratigetic game, and lots of people love.
A little Jewish man in the park!
In short, my dad. Still can't beat him. ><
Keep them coming. Until I started this posting, I wasn't sure where I first learned the game. I realized, after some intense thinking, that it was my step father who first showed me the game.
Its a long story how I got interested to chess. It was on a summer holiday in Egypt we were on a cruise, and I was dying of boredom. I befriended the crew, and found that they played chess and had a chess set. I began to wait and kill time to play them. I managed to beat one of them, and played another to whom I always lost. My dad won. From then on I've been completely addicted to chess. Now I reckon I would beat the whole crew.
My uncle taught me how to play when I was 9 years old. Three months later I had lost interest. I'm 35 years old and have been in and out of chess many times(Is that the correct expression?). Played again when I was 16, 25, 34. What really got me into the game was this site, the way it encourages creative thinking and the massive amounts of fun!
This site definitely helps keep us in touch with the game. For me, because of my schedule, it allows mr to play games with people and have online friends to discuss the game with,
I was one of those folks who got caught up in Bobby Fischer playing for the world championship. I was 8 years old at the time, and even made a scrap book out of the newspaper clippings regarding the match. I even watched the PBS show on the match.
my story would really have several parts, as i get very into chess and then drift away as life's responsibilities overwhelm my ability to choose where to invest my time.
when i was young, maybe ten, i was a voracious reader and came across an older, dusty volume on chess by the prolific fred reinfeld and i.a. horowitz called "the first book of chess". i was smitten. the complexities of the piece movements, the simple elegance of the pieces, the intricacies of strategy and tactics, the arcane way a game was recorded all served to pull me into what seemed to me a very secret and privileged society. i started to read the book, then got a cheap set and renewed the book and kept learning the basics. it was one of the first books i ever checked out of the adult library, and i felt very adult as i delved deeper into the basics.
soon after, we had a new years eve gathering at the house and my sister invited her college boyfriend to the affair. he mentioned he played chess on the college team and asked me if i wanted to play. i jumped at the chance to play another person, as i had very few people in my life that had any interest in the game. i beat him with scholar's mate, he was infuriated and insisted i give him a rematch, which the little brat within me refused to give him, ruining his new year's eve celebration.
my interest waned as i could not find opponents, but soon after everyone wanted to play as the enigma of bobby fischer mesmerized the public. but that faded and my interest did, too, as i began to pursue occupational passions.
while living in new york city in the '80's, however, i stumbled into the most mesmerizing store i have ever been in in my life. no bigger than a kitchen and dining room put together, it sold chess sets, books and clocks. it was an old building, full of charm. no tacky sets were sold. there was an aura of great respect for the game here. the rest of the room was filled with tables that people sat at in galvanized silence, playing the game on rented sets with rented clocks. i would find out later that this little store was world famous and some of the most brilliant chess minds in the world had sat at these tables, competing fiercely as onlookers were astonished by their moves. the silence was excruciating, and the very first time i walked into the place there was an intensity in the air that i have very rarely encountered anywhere else in the world. it was electric and triggered another resurrection of my chess interest.
ten years later i was working at the hotel macklowe when karpov and kasparov met for the title in '90 and '91 and the world was once again riveted to the game, and i was hooked again. as we took our lunch break on the overnight shift at about 2 a.m., the chess sets came out and money was exchanged, seriously accelerating the learning curve.
fits and starts, fits and starts. but the starts are always compelling. finding this site may be the next flight of the phoenix.
Never even considered chess until I stumbled on this site, can't stay off here now! Got a long way to go with my game but I'm enjoying the learning process.
I read a chess article in an encyclopedia when I was about 14 and decided I would like to learn the game. I learned how the pieces move and then got a book from the library. I think it was an old NCO or something. I only remember the book having just about every opening played at that time. I didn't understand a single page. A short time later, I played a few games in my school chess club. I lost every game and never joined the club. A short time after I got married, we bought an Atari and I got the game Chessmaster(probably the first version of this game on the market). I played this game religiously and started to really understand the game of chess for the first time. That's when I started to really fall in love with chess. Later when we got a computer and the internet, I discovered that I could play online. Now, after a few years of not playing, I came back and found this site. And as they say, the rest is history.
My Grandad has Alzheimer's apparently it's hereditary so I started playing as a way of keeping my brain active as this is apparently a good way of preventing it from occurring, now I'm a little addicted
Thanks Hugh_T_Patterson for starting a great thread! [I hope I do not bore with all the details, otherwise the story of how I "started" remains incomplete.]
I am the youngest of three brothers - they are 7 and 10 years older. In my childhood I watched bug-eyed when my granddad, dad and my brothers played Chess, Bridge and Cluedo (british version of Clue but actually the same game). Bridge was (and still is) over my head. Clue(do) facinated me but I could not understand the "calls" (I looked at all their hands by going around, and once glibly spoke out a card and was thenceforth banned from the room)! I pleaded with my granddad to teach me at least chess - I learnt the moves with some difficulty, and only my granddad humored me by playing with me - others refused to play with me as I was a noob. That went on for some time - I just devoured their games.
When a little older, I came across books - Hoyle's Book of Games, two books of Capablanca - and started playing. What really got me started were - "Chess Openings: Theory and Practice" by Horowitz, "50 Two-Move Problems" (I forget the author), "Winning Chess: How to think three moves ahead", "How To Win in the Endings" by Horowitz. Now I was a "player" - I could play with others!
There was no interested people in primary or secondary school, sad to say. But I got exposure to tournaments in college, where I once became finalist.
Then there was a lapse of 20 years, and here I am again, starting chess all over again!
I LIKE CHESS SETS ,WHEN I WAS YOUNG ; IE AROUND FIVE '; the magic of these chess men ; and queen ; the dance on the 64 sq's.
i still like chess and chess sets to this day a whole history about life out there""":
About 10 years ago when i was 7, after school i had to stay at a daycare because my parents were working. By the way this daycare was extremely boring with terrible staff and a major lack of activities. A friend i made there knew how to play chess and so the one day as we were bored he decided to teach me how to play chess, and thats how it all began.
I didn't get seriously into chess until I was 50 (now 52). wish I had started sooner. chess was something I had wanted to look into for awhile but never did. anyway, I was doing some web surfing, I started playing against computers. then I started checking chess sites and liked a couple before I found this site which is superior, by far, to the others I tried.
I wonder how many people got interested in chess due to Howard Stern's recent infatuation with the game in the last year or two?
This is great. It's interesting how people share common bonds in how they learned, etc. Thanks and keep those stories coming.