Who plays Chess? Anyone play chess regularly in Austin? Where are some places you can go with a wide range of talent levels? Internet Chess is alright, but it doesn't have the feel I want. I'm pretty good for someone who has no opening game. Learning fool's mate screwed up my game as I let it become my opening strategy.
Joe Joe, have you tried pogo.com. I used to play there all the time. Lots of good players from all over the world.
Maybe. I've done Lycos, Yahoo, and even one where I got an email everytime my opponent moved. I still prefer the head to head so I can read mannerisms.
I play yahoo chess now, and then... though less than I once did. It's a good place if you're really dying for a game, but I agree that something is lacking without the interpersonal actions.
Me too.. I play on Yahoo often. There are some very good players there. But then you will have to deal with some that are either very rude or leave the game in complete when faced with material loss etc. For some reason, I find it easier to play with an unknown opponent . so I like internet chess
I play yahoo chess now, and then... though less than I once did. I'm willing to give you a rematch any time you want one, haven.
I used to like Chess untill I taught my little brother to play and he started beating me like a drum. I haven't played in a long time because of that.
I taught some of my cousins who lived a couple of hours away how to play, one the same age as me, one two years younger and one 7 years younger. I didn't see them for about a year after teaching them. I got there and my youngest cousin was by far the dominant player and I was cajoled into putting him in his place. I've had to do this many times over the years. I don't know if I can still do it. I guess I'll have to challenge him later.
Ugggh. I'm sad to say my youngest cousin beat me in Chess about a decade ago. He has vowed never to play me again so he will go out on top. (I don't think I can beat him any more).
One of my co-workers bought one of these (see link below) and brought it to work about 4 years or so ago. It's nice, I guess, but seems kind of gimmicky to me. I'd rather just fire up a free program with a free engine that can kick my butt and save the money or maybe just play online. Although, I've thought about buying one of these. I always fear it's going to break down and I'm out of hundreds of dollars. lol. There seem to be a lot more of these type of things around now. I guess trying to capitalize on the gimmick and throw in "AI" into the descriptions to make it seem cool. https://squareoffnow.com/
Don't need all that high-end goofiness. I prefer to have my ass kicked old school : Fire up the ancient Arena UI with something like the Komodo or Stockfish chess engine and suffer.
I don't think so. Not when I play, anyway. I'm decent, but I used to be a tiny bit better than decent. Then I discovered Go. I think it's a more challenging game. A much better game. A very ancient game played for ages in Japan, China, and Korea. It caused me to pretty much stop playing chess. Fair warning - it could happen to you. I discovered it while reading A Child's Garden of Grass, by Jack S. Margolis and published in 1969 on January 1st. I purchased it during the Spring of that year. Buried somewhere in the book (which is buried somewhere in my garage in a box), which is all about how to use Mary Jane (which I didn't need the book to know about - I just wanted to read it), is a section about games and similar things, probably games to play when you're stoned. Anyway, I'm reading it and came across this statement, or at least this is an approximation of it: "If the book does nothing other than introduce you to the game of Go, it was worth buying." My curiosity was aroused. What was this game I'd never heard of? Well, there was no internet in 1969. Not even in Science Fiction, at least that I can recall, and I started reading the genre during the late 1950's. No easy way to find a Go game. I looked all over the City of Houston for one, finally getting lucky after weeks of looking. Go is played on a board with black and white game pieces called stones. Players take turns placing a stone of their color on intersections of a 19x19 square grid. The player with the black stones goes first. A normal Go board has 19 rows and columns of lines. This is what a classic Go board late in a game looks like: Besides the order of play (Black plays first, then White plays, then Black plays, and so on) and handicap (a player learning the game, for example, can be given extra stones at certain places on a board before the beginning of a game in order to make the game competitive - I like this rule) or scoring rules, there are only two rules in Go: Rule 1 (the rule of liberty) is that every stone remaining on the board must have at least one open "point" (an intersection, called a "liberty") next to it (up, down, left, or right), or must be part of a connected group that has at least one such open point ("liberty") next to it. Stones or groups of stones which lose their last liberty are removed from the board. Rule 2 (the "ko rule") is that the stones on the board must never repeat the way the stones were the turn before. Moves which would do so are forbidden, so only moves elsewhere on the board are allowed that turn. This is to prevent the game from going on forever.
Go is one of the oldest board games and in my opinion one of the hardest to be good at. If there is a phrase like "this is chess not checkers", then next level one is "this is Go not chess"
