My story about playing chess and learning for a lifetime

This will be a comprehensive review of my life learning and playing chess and observing some of the greatest moments of my life. I have always loved chess, so let's begin.

 

Chronologically.

 

* in 1977, 6th Grade Walker Elementary School, Mr. Koch, taught 1/2 the class how to play chess. I excelled.

* in 1982, my first chess board was a portable foldable zipper type brown white checkers style piece set

* in 1984, in the US Army at Ft. Lee Virginia, in Delta House AIT platoon, my first major challenger, a private named Law, beat everyone of the 100+ challengers in unit except me. I was his last to challenge since I refused to play against him. I did not want to crush his learning. I observed him while he book studied everyday while playing opponents for months. I did not want to play him because I knew I could beat him. He tried. He lost yet he put up a good fight. It took like 10 moves, and he could not figure out how I did it. I told him, you never thought to sacrifice the Queen to win. I did. The strategy and tactic works. The art of war, and the illusion and art of mis-direction.

* in 1992-1993, a decade had passed and I never played again except for a moment in Bellevue Washington Crossroads mall where a life size huge chess set existed at the mall court center. I enjoyed watching kids and seniors play. I did not play. I wanted too, yet let the kids play. Today only the tiles exist and not the chess pieces. Sad.

* in 2016, my 3rd wife loved chess. me too. I was nice to let her win. She could not beat me as of yet. I actually used her chess board to propose to her to marry me. It worked.

* in 2017, my neighbor wanted me to develop a unique proprietary Chess game, we called it MysteryChess. I worked on it for a year and lost interest because of other priorities and while we stayed in touch, he kept playing it with his friends and neighbors on the hard board.

* in 2021, Chess.com and LiChess.com caught my eye. I played for a while yet lost interest yet on Twitch.com I followed #ChessBrah team for a few years

* in 2023, Lucas Chess came to my attention. Download the portable windows version and learn. What is best too is that it is in Python, one of my new languages, and open source.

 

Where am I today in chess? I sponsored ChessBrah team and bought some of their merchandise over the last three years yet I have come to a stand still until Lucas Chess came across my desk. I have observed my wifey play on her iphone chess for years since we have been married and has an 800 elo after some 20,000 games. Hmmm. I occasionally see her play and ponder.  I see she still enjoys the game yet for some reason stays around 800, and does not advance her game play and other forms of chess tactics, strategy and piece development. Oh well, she enjoys he spare time and probably just loves the distraction and down time. Why stress out, right?

 

What would be my elo if I played. probably around 1000, yet if I focused probably get up to 2000. Would I ever want to earn a GM (Grand Master) rating? Nah. Maybe back in the Army around 1985-1986 yet those days are long past.

 

Chess is a great game. I even thought about have a local chess club here in Reno, Nevada yet been so busy with life, wife, and work, who has the time. I should have picked up golf years ago, and then just gone fishing on my weekends, yet here I am, loving my computing time and writing time. Do what your heart tells you and keep your mind out of it for the most part.

 

Do what you love not what you think. Follow your passion and if sometimes it means holding still and not moving and observing and looking around for a while, so be it. C'est la vie!

 

Ps. I am actually beefing up my language skills in French, Spanish and Tagalog which has been very rewarding to me as well, and then switch back to SQL and Python, and C#, and then designing and building HPC systems, and then focusing on my local history, my rose flower and vegetable gardens, and then come the honey do's.

 

 

 

more to come...