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

@USArmyParatrooper thanks for your service and your story. It brings up what I think is an important plus for chess. It was a big help for me laying in a hospital bed. It has helped prisoners of war. Prison inmates. Or many other situations where people face boredom.  

Great story! I'm a bit curious now... did you ever play him again?

Here is a reminder of what this thread is about. For any new posters who jump to the end before reading. Also this will put the topic back on the top of the forum listings. ;-)

What is our shared human experience with this game? What have we done? Where are we going? 

Just as a way to think of this.

I am from ...

I learned to play chess ...

In the past I have done the following chess related activities ...

Currently I am doing the following chess activities ...

My story started on this very website when I was a kid. I had this sort of attachment of chess at about age 9 or 10, and just played the game online with the AI. Of course, the robot killed me almost every time, and I would get check mated for the majority of the time, or the game would end at a stalemate. I have gotten several cheapo boards that were on sale to play with several family members. At that point I just played it as if it were nothing. I found it to be a game that relaxed me and allowed my thoughts to unfold, and played it on occasion. Unfortunately, my taste in chess withered away as my passion for it faded away, and only played it a few times if I found a board somewhere and if someone somewhere was willing to play it and there weren't any missing pieces. I didn't really want to play it, and kind of left it to collect dust, as nothing really interested me anymore. Only recently have I dusted my passion off and started playing the game casually with the robot. I wanna play some more enough to gain enough skill to read every move. Now, I wish to fulfill my hobby as I find others to play with.

My story started on this very website when I was a kid. I had this sort of attachment of chess at about age 9 or 10, and just played the game online with the AI. Of course, the robot killed me almost every time, and I would get check mated for the majority of the time, or the game would end at a stalemate. I have gotten several cheapo boards that were on sale to play with several family members. At that point I just played it as if it were nothing. I found it to be a game that relaxed me and allowed my thoughts to unfold, and played it on occasion. Unfortunately, my taste in chess withered away as my passion for it faded away, and only played it a few times if I found a board somewhere and if someone somewhere was willing to play it and there weren't any missing pieces. I didn't really want to play it, and kind of left it to collect dust, as nothing really interested me anymore. Only recently have I dusted my passion off and started playing the game casually with the robot. I wanna play some more enough to gain enough skill to read every move. Now, I wish to fulfill my hobby as I find others to play with.

My story started on this very website when I was a kid. I had this sort of attachment of chess at about age 9 or 10, and just played the game online with the AI. Of course, the robot killed me almost every time, and I would get check mated for the majority of the time, or the game would end at a stalemate. I have gotten several cheapo boards that were on sale to play with several family members. At that point I just played it as if it were nothing. I found it to be a game that relaxed me and allowed my thoughts to unfold, and played it on occasion. Unfortunately, my taste in chess withered away as my passion for it faded away, and only played it a few times if I found a board somewhere and if someone somewhere was willing to play it and there weren't any missing pieces. I didn't really want to play it, and kind of left it to collect dust, as nothing really interested me anymore. Only recently have I dusted my passion off and started playing the game casually with the robot. I wanna play some more enough to gain enough skill to read every move. Now, I wish to fulfill my hobby as I find others to play with.

I was a kid in the 60's.   Parents worked.  Went to babysitters and daycare at the various places where my parents moved to.  One place I went to the local park when I was about 2nd or 3rd grade.  Some Junior High Kid or High School Kid who was a volunteer taught me how to play chess with those red-and-black folding boards with the flimsy chess pieces.    No lessons, nothing.  Just the rules.  Promptly forgot about it.

Then we moved to a different city.  I hit 7th Grade and Junior High School.  There was a fellow 7th grader who was taking Calculus classes at the local community college.  Dude was a intellectual giant but socially shunned, lousy athlete, and kinda ugly in a typical dweeb way.  I took pity on him.  Befriended him.  He asked me if I wanted to play chess.  I accepted.  And he must've beat me well over 100 games straight.  Could've been two or three hundred, it's been so long ago.  All I remember is that all those beatings made me determined.  Dude could kick my butt in math, but all this chess whupping is pissing me off.  So I went to the local library and checked out a book.   I don't even remember what book it was.  Probably a Reinfeld book.  I don't even think I finished it.  I was just too impatient.  (Chess books require a lot of time and work for an American junior higher in the 70's.  Plus it's not really cool.)

Anyways, I must've learned enough that I finally beat him!  I'm guessing it was around my sophomore or junior year in high school.  Then I started regularly beating him.  Enough to displace him from 1st board of our high school chess team!  Ooooh-rah!  That frickin' pissed off Mr. Math Decathalon Gold Medalist a lot.  The sore loser quit the chess team!

I continued to play and signed up for some USCF tournaments in my Junior High and High School days.  I sucked, maybe got up to 13-1400.  Gave up chess when I went away to college.  Nobody in my dorms played.   Towards the end of my graduation days I started playing again.  I bought chess books, read a little bit, got tired of them, and quit them after going over a couple games.  (I would do the method of covering up the moves, and guessing the moves.  I never guessed the right moves and plus it would take me forever to go over a game.  Opening books had tons of variations, and that would just freak me out.)

Anyways, prior to giving up chess in my 20's, I had a 1.5-1.5 record against Experts!   I turned to backgammon.  More fun.  Faster game.  And had a gambling element to it.  Chess was dull, girls thought you were a nerd, plus it was time-consuming.  

So Rip Van Winkle said goodbye to chess for 30+ years.  I read back in the 90's that Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, and this confirmed my decision to give up chess.  Thought it was dead.

Only reason I came back in early 2017 was my young son signed up for chess club in his elementary school.  The "coach" of the chess club signed all the kids up for Chesskids.com.  So I was looking at him over his shoulder and saw that chess.com was the parent of chesskids.com.  So I got on my computer and went to chess.com.

Holy Moly!!  All these decades I had thought chess was dead!!  I never bothered to teach my high school daughter nor my 2nd grade son the game of chess.    Why teach them a dead game?   So when I looked at chess.com in 2017 I was SOOOOO surprised that chess was NOT dead.   Lot of scholastic events and players.  I had no idea that an Indian player had won the world championship.  I always thought the Russians were going to own the World Championship.  

It was amazing.  So I took my boy to a local tournament just to get the flavor and environment of the tournament chess scene again.   I talked to the TD.  "Hey, if I was to play again in USCF, would I have to start out again as an Unrated?"  He said you never lose your rating.  I was surprised.  He asked me my last name.  He looked me up and said my rating was 1762!!

I was SHOCKED.  For decades I thought I thought was at best a Class "C" player.  Oh my goodness, I'm only 38 points away from being an 1800!!   That's not too shabby.  Of course, I only play at a 1500 level now (as evidenced by my blitz rating), but I'm hoping to return to OTB play later this year when I feel like I won't hemorraghe points like crazy.

Thanks for starting up this thread RMChess1954.

More great stories. Thanks everyone for sharing your story with us. For reminding us there are humans with stories on the other end of every game. I highly recommend that you read them all. 

There is a great deal of truth to this ... 

I learned to play chess from my uncle Peter when I was about 8 years old. Like one or two other players here, the rules I learned were not correct and so I had some unlearning to do later when I went to the local chess club in Hull in Yorkshire later in life.

It has been an interesting journey. I became interested in older chess set styles after buying a damaged chess set in Scotland at a local auction. When I moved to London to work I bought sets in Portobello market and later started restoring them. I also have the claim to be the weakest player to be on the cover of CHESS magazine. Fame of a sort perhaps,  

I'm a bad player and I've played in many chess competitions. Trust me, the sooner the better.  

If you can, just go.  Organized competitive chess is a lot of fun (and will teach you chess too); definitely worth a try.  

Chess is above all an interaction between two people. That is the whole point of this thread. When you tell your story you help others make that human connection. Computer chess is like a punching bag. The punching bag will always win. You cannot defeat the punching bag. It is simply a tool for training. It does not care if it wins or loses. It does not feel you hitting it. No matter how much you hit it you will not knock it out. Is the punching bag then world champion? Is boxing done? Everyone should quit boxing because the bag is unbeatable? We could add a robot arm, give it the perfect counterpunch. You hit the bag, it punches back and knocks you out. The sport should then end? No it is a sport for people. I love chess.com, but because there are real people to play. I'll take sitting across from another player every time. 

I would like to add a cautionary note about playing chess with casual non-club players,

Whilst I am sure there are out there chess players a good deal stronger than me who have never darkened the door of a chess club, a lot of casual players tend to be rather weak. (in my experience).

I used to take a cheap plastic Staunton set with me to various building sites in the hope of getting a game, and often did. Spider, a brickie like me, on one site, was a keen player but not strong. I ended up giving him queen odds to even things up but he still could not beat me, until one day, inevitably I expect, he did beat me. He went around telling people that he had finally beaten me, until someone gently reminded him of the queen odds he had been getting. 

So the moral to this story is, if you give odds and loose, get a rematch at evens as soon as possible.

 Oh how I would love to! Never saw him again.  I’m proud to say I’ve sparked the interest in other soldiers, though.  I was the “one to beat“ on my last deployment.  One of the younger soldiers was interested in getting better and I coached him, and even signed him up on Chess.com.  I got him doing tactical puzzles and everything.  Over the course of six months he improved tremendously.  At the end of the tour I actually had to think about my moves against him lol.  I think he beat me like three or four times in total, one of them was with a pretty tricky combination for checkmate. 

Nice topic and interesting stories.

I am from Amsterdam.

My grandfather taught me the moves when I was 8 years old. I'm sure I never beat him,  but I remember his first compliment when I moved my queen to a center position. In high school I sometimes played and against friends when I was challenged, but when I was about 20 years I was in a rather strange state of mind and regarded every game as a symbol of the stuff that was going on in the world. Naturally I lost every game this way and furthermore it toom me a few years to recover my sanity. Then I sometimes played in a pub I used to come to and I considered myself not too bad a player until I decided  to join a chess club when I was about 35 years old. This turned out to be disastrous. I lost every game, even against the lowest rated players and I became so disgusted with the game that I stopped playing until about 5 or 6 years ago. I started watching games being played on the street chess board on the Max Euwe square in Amsterdam (look it up. It's nice!). I realised that I lost every game because these club players know a lot of opening theory and If one doesn't answer right in the opening one is already lost. So I spent a few years watching and in 2014 I opened an account on Chess.com and played some one hour games. But I wasn't even aware  there was this daily chess or correspondence chess so after a 2,5 year break I started playing daily chess here regularly.

I found out I hate chess with a clock. Even the one hour games would put me in a state of stress, not because of the problem on the board but because of the time pressure. I associate chess with easy chairs, peaceful atmosphere and good company with maybe a cigar and a glass of cognac or Whiskey. I want to think about my moves undisturbed.

Anyway: My rating in the first two (daily) games went up to 1376 or so and then plummeted to well below 1200. But by playing regularly (I'm playing in about 10 tournaments now) and doing some lessons I climbed back up to about 1360 and I'm winning games from 1400+ and (some) 1500+ players. I only just now started playing opponents over 1500 to 2000

So my estimation is, that I'll keep on climbing as I think that my actual rate now should be about 1450. With more study and avoiding the stupid blunders I sometimes make I'll be able to pass that threshhold.

It is said that at an older age one can't get better at chess But I've certainly become better this last year and I think that is because only now I am studying theory. When someone does all this at a younger age, yes, then it is likely that at an older age one doesn't learn as much as before.

However that may be: I'm glad that I joined chess.com. I like the atmosphere and the lay out and the stuff besides the games. So hoping I haven't bored you to death I'll wish you all good games and a new insight in the game every day.

Not to hog the forum but I just remembered an incident from when I was working (as a brickie) in Scotland. It was on the same job where I bought the chess set in the auction, but the clients had decided to rake a weekend break in Edinburgh and invited me along. When we all got settled in I was taken to a local pub which had two chess-playing brothers running it. They would play all comers, one tending bar whilst the other played chess. I was to play them, and I won. After a few games, the brothers alternating, My friends in the bar started to buy me drinks, either the local strong ale or a shot of whisky, depending on how full my beer glass was. The beer was 6 or 8 % alcohol (known locally as 'heavy').

It was not long before I was definitely feeling no pain but somehow kept on winning, and drinking.

A good night was had by all. I could hardly stand at the end.

If any of you want to join me on my blog. I'm having a book study group for Aaron Nimzowitsch's classic My System. I've owned the book for years and skimmed it a few times. So I thought I'd go through it with a group. https://www.chess.com/blog/RandyMerrell