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

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Inappropriate language - Alex

 Great stories!

Im here purely by chance.

I was 11 years old, at school and it was lunch break, but pouring down. On my way to the school library I passed the ' Chess Room' and saw a boy from my class sat at a board. I entered the room simply to say I didnt know he could play chess, and he asked me if I wanted to learn the moves.

I said OK , and that was that. I found I enjoyed the game, and also remember not being able to force mate with King and Queen versus King! 

After school circumstances dictated I didnt pick up the game again until my early twenties when I joined the local club , and made the second team, then the first playing in the Yorkshire League. I also won some prizes in weekend tournaments despite spending most of the time at the Bar!

in the late seventies I began playing postal chess and its then I actually began to improve , this of course being well before computers came along.

Here in France I played in the French league, and have an FIDE rating , but havent played any chess over the board for 5 years . I intend to return to OTB soon.

Not quite about how I started at chess but an amusing story I think.

I played for many years in the Hull Chess Club which was held in the Townhouse of William Wilberforce. Some of the players were fond of going for a pint or two in a local pub and pushing some wood, (5 mins). We had a favorite local where the owner of the pub (mistakenly IMHO) thought that having a table of chessplayers added some class. He would frequently send over a big plate of chips (fries) and chicken wings or something of the sort. This went down very well with the players as you can assume. One day it was proposed that as a thank you, we should form a team and win the Yorkshire cup for the pub to display along with its other trophies (Pool, darts dominoes etc).

We formed a team, we had three county strength players but in order to win, we needed strength in depth. Favours and friends were called in. Two IMs were recruited from other towns and the cup was indeed won.

The I'ms needed a map to find the pub as they were from out of town. However, the cup was very large, bigger than any of the others and stood in pride of place in the trophies box for it's allotted year.   

I bet he would swap sides anytime.

Good point Daniel

And you're going alright, looking at your rating

Thats true

Interesting story.  Just FYI, not tournaments have rules on teams such as the members must have participated in the team (e.g. training/meetings) for at least a certain amount of times or length of time.  Although this rule seems to never get checked (probably too hard to do), but it is usually written somewhere.

I started playing in grade school. I was a bad kid, got in lots of trouble. My dad had a barber shop about 4 blocks away so when my mom couldn't handle me she would send me to the barber shop to stay until my dad finished working. Nothing to do there as a child, except listen to grown men tell their stories but there was a chess board. Needless to say, I got in trouble a lot, and spent a lot of time there. Learned how to play, and played against grown ups, never played anyone my age. Never studied or memorized openings. Learned pretty good defense though playing against more experienced adults.

I'm committed to the chess club, guys.  So far, 30+ permission slips returned.  Help!!!!

When I first replied here, I wasn't sure about forming a chess club.  I'm glad we've limited to only son's grade level.  Chess seems very popular with the kids today!

I learned to how the pieces moved when I was around 7 or so but that was the extent of my learning. I played here and there, I even lost some money at Washington square park but I expected that. Then one day a friend of mine (we were very competitive with each other playing everything from basketball, tennis, to Mortal Kombat!) asked if I wanted to play him in chess. I'm not going to back down, so yes!! This became our normal routine and I got tired of losing so I went to the local book store and found a book to teach me chess. And so my passion began. A year or two latter I went back to the park to play the hustlers again and almost beat one of them!! This was about 10 years ago.

My blog says it all.

https://www.chess.com/blog/JayeshSinhaChess/finally-breaking-the-1500-barrier-on-chess-com-from-859-at-one-point

Wrote a blog on the chess jourey so far. How it started and so on.

It took some searching but I found it. https://www.chess.com/blog/NintendoMaster853/this-is-how-i-got-here Thanks.

 Okay.

Nice blog.

"Elo whether on chess.com or anywhere is not an indication of you skill, but more an indication of your form."

There is a lot of truth in that. Looking at the rating of your opponent can cause you to become careless when your opponent has a lower rating and too defensive when it is higher.

I feel very different about the clock though. I looked at a lot of fast games and they are full of mistakes and missed opportunities which even I can spot, being 500 or so points lower.

When the flag falls in a difficult position I think it's a shame, like making love and stopping half way. a great dissapointment. Also, I don't like to win because my opponent makes dumber mistakes than I do. I enjoy the problem on the board and I'm distracted by the time pressure. When the situation is the most complicated there needs to be time to think. So I think  a slow game with  deep thinking improves one's skills ten times more than fast chess. But maybe this is just a personal stance and it is different for others.

Well said AyoV.