What is your story? How did you start playing chess? What have you, and are you doing in chess?

Just realized your question was probably directed to me?

 The low 1600 rating here on chess.com is not my rating!  I have never had such a low rating. The first USCF rated game i ever had -- I beat an expert and ended the tournament with a Class A rating. [1959 U S Open in Omaha Nebraska]

One day, unbeknownst to me, my son played a few games on my account and i did not realize this until a couple of weeks later. While he won all his games--he still came out with that low 1600+ ratings.

I tried to get chess.com to erase that rating but they state they cannot do this.

Raise crows...

Great story! I read with much interest. The thread here just needs a little patience to become the hit on Chess com

LOL RM translate

Laugh Out Loud.

I took a course in Medieval History in high school. A kid in the class did a class talk on chess. I was 14 then, and have been playing it off and on now for 64 years. Only in the last six months have I gotten semi-serious. I like the game because it's full of surprises.  

Do you remember anything of the talk? It seems interesting. Maybe play a game by the old rules. Would be intersting maybe. The pieces moved differently, especially the pawns (en passant) and the king (castling).

My dad bought me a wooden chess set after he made a visit to Europe. I was roughly 8 or 9 years old. I would occasionally play my dad. Not surprisingly, he was much better than I was. I was in Boy Scouts and played one of the older boys. He beat me with Scholars mate. I learned and continued to play.

We moved and one of the boys in the apartment complex also played chess. We were fairly evenly matched. After our parents got homes built we ended up in different high schools and both played on our schools chess teams. I ended up being team captain for my school and played 2nd board. We did pretty well in our matches.

At the county high school chess tournament I ended up coming in 2nd or 3rd. I ended up winning a little magnetic chess set that I may still have somewhere.

Around that time I visited my aunt and uncle one day, and they had a neighbor that played chess and liked to brag he his company champion. The uncle knew I played and sent me over to take on this guy. I think I played him 3 games and won all three. My uncle was truly delighted.

I didn't play much in college, but once I started working a co-worker played and was quite good (a NM). I ended up playing enough OTB tournaments to get rated. I was pretty weak, 1437, and that disappointed me at the time. I played correspondence chess to and I was somewhat better at that.

All of this was in the distant past. I think my last rated OTB game was in 91 and my last correspondence game was in 85.

Fast forward and I'm now nearing retirement age (59). I was thinking about retirement and what I would do to keep active. My thoughts turned to chess. Supposedly doing stuff like chess is good for the brain, and it would give me another possible social outlet as well. I've also been very curious about the whole 10,000 hour of deliberate practice to become an expert thing. Would it be possible for someone my age to actually improve if I put in the effort or not? Could I even maintain what little form I had earlier with the 1437 rating? So I'm kind of running it as an experiment as well.

I'm absolutely dreadful at blitz, but I'm doing better at longer time controls (I don't play just here). I have started to occasionally go to a local club as well for practice playing OTB. At this point I am definitely improving. My chess tempo tactics rating has been going up and is now around 1500. But it is very unclear whether I have regained what little form I had when I was playing USCF rated tournaments. There is only one way to eventually find out.

Very nice story.  Will love to hear you play OTB uscf tournament again. 

i played some when I was in HS but really picked it up when I was in a psych ward and mental health rehab program I was in. Did take online serious until December.

I agree. Here you will find soma amazing stories. Read the OP and leave your own story for others.

Happy Father's Day! It is clear many of you were introduced to chess by your father.

I started playing 1 and a half years ago when my uncle came to visit me. I joined my local club and became addicted to the game. I now play in every tournament i can. My rating is currently 1900. Every day i do opening prep, analyse GM games first without computer simply commenting on moves and calculating what i think are other options. afterwards i compare my ideas with a computer or other GM annotations. Every day i also solve 30 minutes of tactics, do positional and calculation excircises( I am currently doing puzzles from Jacob Aagards Grandmaster preperation) For 1800- 2500 players. I also play raopid and blitz online and do a specified topic e.g. Tal attacks, structures, karpov endgames, endgame theory

I'm from Germany, I started to like chess after I saw a video of Agadmators chess channel. I watched his videos all day and wanted to play. First I downloaded some apps on my phone like "Play Magnus". Then I thought that engines are too strong and I wanted to play other people. Not everyone I know likes and plays chess so I found chess.com and I started playing here.

 A friend taught me how to play. I was 14 then and had learned of the game from a kid who gave a talk on chess in high school. I then asked around and was told about this kid who played. His dad had a bar and that's where I started to learn the game. I became quite good at the game and beat my teacher all the time. Later I joined the air force and played the game with fellow airmen while in tech school. After assignment to S. Korea, I played Korean players. They take the game very seriously and a big crowd would watch the games. I never lost a game over the year (1976-1977) I was there but all competitors were hobby players, like me. To this day, it remains just a hobby but a very fun one.

I joined the high school chess team during my sophomore year, in late 80's. We were a team of noobs, with no leadership. But then we found a very good coach ( a former alumnus and valedictorian of our HS, who had just graduated college) who whipped us into state champions, in under 3 months.

I played for my HS in my Junior and Senior years as well. Then RL intervened, and I stopped playing for a few years. 

Then I was stationed in Britain in the early 90's, during the Short/Adams/Nunn boom, and we formed a chess team of Americans. Played a lot there. Seemed like EVERYBODY was playing at that time.

After I left the service, I have played very little over-the-board. Some here and there. But most my play has been on the internet.