I learned to play chess in kindergarten and later played against friends and classmates, but I never joined a club – and then ended up not playing it for decades.
But now I started to get back into it… using apps to learn and play just makes it so much easier to make progress. I can also honestly say that I’m fairly addicted to solving at least a few chess puzzles daily. (Chess puzzles are about finding the – typically between one and three, sometimes more – moves that will lead to a material advantage or deliver check mate to the opponent – Zugzwang (enforcing moves by the opponent) is key. A puzzle of that kind usually takes just between a half to several minutes.)
Am I a strong player..? Nope. But I have plans to change that over time.
My main weaknesses, as far as I can tell, are impulsivity (moving too fast and overlooking opportunities or dangers) and fixation/omission (not scanning the whole board properly before making a move). But awareness is at least a good starting point 🙂
If you play chess and would like to play remotely (even if every move takes a day or more – no worries, we’re all busy people) you can find me on these two platforms:
Chess By Post | Chess.com | |
My user name | svenf | svenf |
Basic version | Free | Free |
Paid version | One-time low cost version for ad-free experience available | Subscriptions available for premium features |
Language(s) | English | English and 65 more |
Games against other users | ☒ | ☒ |
Games against computer | ☒ | ☒ |
Statistics | ☒ | ☒ |
Puzzles | ☒ | ☒* |
Game analyses | ☐ | ☒* |
Teaching contents | ☐ | ☒* |