I started playing when we were overseas, in Baghdad. I was 5 my brother was 8. Too hot to walk anywhere so we played a lot of chess. That was back when the Elephant was an Elephant, not a Bishop. Remember, there was no such thing as a Bishop, a Christian construct, in a game that predated the existence of Christianity. There were also Prime Ministers, not Queens.

Those changes were easy to adapt to. What was harder was this bit about the pawns being able to take up to two steps on the first moves for each. That cut down the possibilities and moved it further from being a game of strategy and more a game of memorization of patterns, as the openings were drastically reduced. It moved faster, but too much rote over creativity in this new way of playing. So, I checked out for a while. Then when I did start playing again, trying to outthink the memorizers, someone threw in that STUPID "um-piss ant" rule. WHAT A STUPID RULE. That was it, I stopped again.

Well, now I'm engaged to a guy who also grew up playing chess and his ego doesn't come unhinged if he is beaten by a female (we are old farts 68 & 69 yrs old). So, I'm going for it now and learning the standard memorization way.

aJoy2cre8