hitthepin

Hello, chess player who is reading this! 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

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

”Willpower can overcome great obstacles.” -HitThePin

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

”Whispers can be loud.” -HitThePin

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

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

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 that good ... 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 it, and learned the pieces: the sweeping Rook, the leaping Knight, the all-powerful Queen. We had an old chess set in the garage, and so naturally my dad and I tried a few games. Naturally, we outright sucked.

Years passed. Other than the occasional offhand game with my dad, I didnt 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.

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.

Somehow, for some reason, I suddenly thought that pushing pieces made of wood and plastic around a checkered board was so much more elegant and exciting. Neither the pieces nor the board had 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.

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

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 all sorts of time limits, populate The Official Goofing Off Thread, and enjoy playing variants.

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.  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.

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.

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 middle school, doing 100 push-ups in a single set, beating Super Mario 64, jumping on a pogo stick 1234 times in a row, learning the meaning of life, obtaining a black belt in Tae Kwon Doe, and getting my USCF rating above 1250. Not in that order.

Keep calm and play chess!