Hello, Chess.com!

My name is Dennis Parlevliet. I am 21 years old and I live in the Netherlands - I was born in a Dutch town called "Katwijk", but I've lived in the town called "Voorhout" for at least 17 years now.

My mother's name is Liesbeth and my father's name is Johan, though sadly he passed away a while back. I've got one younger sister, her name is Suzanne.

I have a skin disorder called EB (which is short for Epidermolysis Bullosa), which causes my skin to come loose if you rub it slightly or it creates a blister - the skin of an EB patient is usually referred to as "being as fragile as the wings of a butterfly".

My hobbies, beside chess, are: playing video games (I mostly play on the computer or on my Nintendo 3DS XL) I'm a big fan of LEGO as long as I can remember and I've got a huge collection of a lot of different LEGO sets (my parents used to help me build an entire town out of existing sets on a table made especially for the LEGO... I always called it "LEGO Island", in a tip of the hat to the LEGO Island games). I also like reading, although I don't do it that often. I've read all Harry Potter books, I've read the Hunger Games trilogy, a really exciting trilogy, that was. Currently I am reading a series called TimeRiders. It's mostly a thriller/sci-fi book for youth.

I've known the basic rules and strategies of chess for quite some time, and I don't really remember who taught me the basics. I've been a member of a Dutch chess club for three years, and I really enjoyed it at first. But I was still in school then, and I was getting homework from school and the chess club... and that's why I stopped going to the club, because of the homework - kinda lame of me, I'll admit. But recently I decided I wanted to get better at it - and then I found this site. It's really wonderful considering all the features Chess.com can give us. I've already watched a few video tutorials to sharpen my skills and also played a few Live Chess games. I'm still pretty new to Chess.com, but I hope Ican become a great chess player and be able to play some great games thanks to everything Chess.com has in store for chess lovers.

Some fun facts about chess in Dutch! OK, first off, chess is called "schaken". The pieces are as follows: the pawn is called a "pion" (pronounced as "pee-on"), the bishop a "loper" (pronounced as "loh-purr), the knight a "paard" (it is pronounced exactly as it says), the rook "toren" (pronounced as "toh-ruhn"), the queen "koningin" (pronounced as "koh-ning-in") or "dame" (which is pronounced as "dah-muh"), and finally, the king is called the "koning" (pronounced as "koh-ning"). If the king is in check, we call it "schaak". If the king is checkmated, we call that "schaakmat"!

Paprika2215