hitthepin

Hello, chess.com! Whether you’re a man, woman, cat, a cute baby, a fruit (you know who you are), a vegetable, a computer, or a group of people, I know that your time is super important, so thanks for spending some of it to look at my profile.

Some quotes: 

"The best chess strategy involves making legal moves." -HitThePin

”A knight on the rim is total trash. Yup. That’s how the saying goes. Totally.” -HitThePin

"How do you score points while bowling?” -HitThePin

”Willpower can overcome great obstacles.” -HitThePin

”Evolution mandates that we are cousins to the lizards.” -HitThePin

"Get better. There is no other way." -HitThePin

”Whispers can be loud.” -HitThePin

"Talent beats hard work when talent works hard." -HitThePin

”The best way we can make use of our time is to know just how much of it we have.” -HitThePin

”Sometimes Nothing is better than something.” - @HessianWarrior

“Bullet and blitz is for your intuition. Rapid helps you make firm calculation. And daily is there so you can take too much time and chat.” - @Waredude

”All pawns are created equal, it’s the player that messes them up.” - @HorribleTomato

”If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?” - John Wooden

”What lies before us and what lies behind us is small compared to what lies within us.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

”When you go on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” - Many different people.

With that stuff out of the way, let me talk a little bit about myself.

I’m HitThePin, and I live in beautiful Southern California (don’t be a stalker). Chess-wise I’ve been playing for over a decade, but only started my tournament life a few months ago. If you take a peek at my rating, you can tell that I’m not the best chess player in the world ... yet!

My first experience with chess came when I was a four-year old. For my birthday, my dad had gotten me gift, a book titled, “Chess For Children”. I read the book and its cute cartoons, and through it learned the pieces and how they moved: the humble Pawn, the sweeping Rook, the leaping Knight, the all-powerful Queen. We had an old chess set from somewhere that no one remembers, and so naturally my dad and I tried a few games. As expected, we outright sucked. We hung something every other move. I eventually took enough of my father’s pieces and checkmated him with my queen and rook.

Years passed. Other than the occasional offhand game with my dad and maybe one of my brothers (who hate the game. Which is a shame), I didn’t care about chess at all. He bought me an occasional book here and there, and that was it. Outside of that, I played sports and worked hard in school like a normal kid. Even though I’m wasn’t and am not a normal kid.

Recently though, I quit hockey and suddenly found myself with a whole ton of free time. Wanting to take a break from physical activity (and failing), I decided to take up chess. Yes, that is a logical choice: you quit a sport that involves violently bashing your opponents apart, and you take up a sport that involves sitting in a chair for hours, pushing pieces made of wood and plastic around a checker board.

Somehow, for some reason though, I suddenly thought that pushing pieces made of wood and plastic around a checkered board was so much more elegant and exciting than it was before.. I began to think that it was worth pouring time and effort into it. The game hasn’t changed. Yet something different, something significant had happened. To this day, I still can’t place the true reason I got more serious in chess. Nevertheless, it was there.

About half a year ago, I was going stir-crazy playing my family members and my clubmates every other Saturday and decided that I needed a way to play chess more. I wanted to play with new people every day, people at my skill level and any skill level, at any place and any time.

What happened? I found this awesome website and all of the people on it, and I registered an account. Thus I found my way onto chess.com.

Not too long after, inspired from all the games I had played here, I decided I needed to put my skills to the test OTB.

I soon decided to compete in a tournament's U900 section. I won all five rounds, got first place, and obtained my freshly minted USCF rating of 1151.

That’s how I got introduced into the tournament life of chess!

More recently, I stumbeld upon a little section of the chess forums with the title of "Chess 960 and Other Variants". I walked in and saw several intriguing variants being played. I joined in the fun, and now I am player of many variants, among them Bulldog Chess and Chess on an Infinite Plane. I hope that you join our variant family.

Currently on this website I play lots and lots of games with every single possible time limit (I played 1|60! Do you know how WEIRD that time control is?) , populate The Official Goofing Off Thread, casually play the variants, and try to give a hand here or there to random people asking questions.

Other than the fact that I play chess (and I know the periodic table, and 150 digits of pi), I'm an ordinary teenager today. Ok, I guess maybe I’m not a normal teenager. There's nothing really interesting about my life outside of chess that you actually need to know about. If I decide there is something, then I will put it in. This profile page is still a work in progress. STILL, even after many months, it is still a work in progress.

If you would like to play a game with me, please send a challenge! I will play you at any time, with any time control.

If you want to be friends, send me a request! As long as your not a bad friend or a troll-and I believe that you’re not until proven otherwise-then a great friendship might be brewing.

Some of my accomplishments include: memorizing the entire periodic table (out of boredom), successfully playing competitive hockey, learning how to read at the age of 12 months, completing The Impossible Quiz without hacking, not playing chess for a whole day (*gasp* and this was after I got this account), surviving 540 days of middle school (this is a live count: 0 days left to go, I finished middle school!), doing 100 push-ups in a single set when I was nine, beating Super Mario 64, jumping on a pogo stick 1234 times in a row, learning the meaning of life (bring joy to yourself and this around you!), obtaining a black belt in Tae Kwon Doe (the Korean martial art), beating Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time in under 17 hours of gameplay, reading 600 pages in two hours, beating 47/20 mode in Ultimate Custom Night, and getting my USCF rating above 1400. Not in that order.

I am chief statistician of TOGOT, refined googlogist, and the world’s leading expert on largest chess.com threads.

I am also the current writer of the Bulldog Manifesto.

Keep calm and play chess! See you around.