
Ask HN: Who plays chess? - alanthonyc
I'm on <i>Chess with Friends</i> (iOS) and Chess.com. Same username as hn on both.<p>I'm not super good, but I've been getting better since I started playing online a month ago. I used to play a lot more when I was a kid.
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travisjeffery
I used to play competitive A LOT when I was younger, my best was 3rd place for
an all Ontario (Canada) competition and I won some county competitions. But it
got to the point of being too time consuming and too boring, all you're doing
is memorizing openings and certain strategies for middle play and end game
situations rather than playing.

Having said that I really enjoy going through the old Master's games. If
you're into Chess then I suggest getting 'The Most Instructive Games of Ches
Ever Played' by Chernev ([http://www.amazon.com/Most-Instructive-Games-Chess-
Played/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Most-Instructive-Games-Chess-
Played/dp/0486273024)). He goes through each game explaining the strategy and
contexts of the games and moves, really enjoyable if you're into Chess.

chessgames.com is a cool site for going through their archive of games. My
favorite is 'The Game of the Century' with Fischer who was my favorite:
<http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008361>

~~~
num1
I had a similar experience. I was a strong contender for the US West amateur
championship for a few years. But once I got good enough to spend most of my
thinking time on positional concerns things stopped being a game and started
being a huge database to memorize. I would spend my free time analyzing my
games for weaknesses in my strategy, and practiced speed problem solving using
giant books of tactical problems. Everybody serious about chess hits the point
of diminishing returns per unit of studying, and I believe that the "good"
players are the people who can ignore the impossibility of their task and keep
studying anyway. There are probably better solutions to the problem of
diminishing returns than quitting cold turkey, (the solution I chose) but I'm
convinced my experiences with chess have made me a much better programmer.
Looking ahead at the consequences of my actions, being able to look for
oddball solutions to impossible situations, never giving up, and occasionally
memorizing established solutions are all things I'm appreciative to chess for
teaching me.

~~~
travisjeffery
Yeah, basically there's a point where you come to an ultimatum: "Do I want
chess to be my life?" and we chose no -- simple as that. And it seems we're
both happy we took that path! :)

~~~
num1
Hmm, I was content to show agreement simply by up-voting your comment, then I
realized that was an anonymous action. So publicly, +1 to your comment, you
hit it right on the nail.

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slyall
I played chess a seriously when I was at school but my family moved to a town
without a decent club in last year at school so I stopped playing.

Started again around 2.5 years ago and I'm pretty serious. Trying to do 10-20
hours per week of training, seeing a coach for 2 hours/week and entering
tournaments (I'm in the middle of one this weekend).

I don't play much online, just chess puzzles, books and playing against the
computer ( The hard bit with computer chess these days is _not_ "playing
better than a grandmaster" but "playing like a nnnn rated human" ). At the
level I'm at memorising openings isn't too big. perhaps 20 lines to a depth of
a dozen moves is enough.

My rating is 1900 FIDE (although I'm probably 100 points lower in real life)
which puts me in the top 100,000 players in the world or something like that.
My medium term plans are to get a low level title (below grandmaster) in
around 3-5 years. It's a plausible goal if I put in the hours.

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cletus
I used to play Chess when I was much younger and could beat pretty much
everyone I knew by age 10-11. That's not saying an awful lot because I didn't
know anyone particular good, and that was really the problem.

I lived in a town of about 10,000 at the time (and later in a town of
15-20,000 up until the end of high school) so didn't really have the
opportunity to learn and get better. This was before the internet and playing
a computer isn't quite the same thing.

It's something I'm a little disappointed about because I wish I'd had that
opportunity by living somewhere bigger.

You learn from people who are better than you far more than those that are
worse than you.

In university I met up with someone I'd gone to high school with (until he
moved). He'd become something of a gun when it came to pool (eight ball). He
used to practice 6 hours a day (I later learned) and won a junior state
championship. He could beat pretty much any of us with his eyes closed. Once
he beat someone when he was drunk only playing with one hand and won
convincingly.

I used to play with him and actually got pretty good. By pretty good I mean I
could take a game from him maybe 1 in 10-15. Against pretty much anyone else I
did extremely well and even did well in the odd local comp (second place I
think was my best).

That's what I mean about getting the opportunity to get better.

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sliverstorm
I was never good enough to surpass the simple reactionary one-move-deep
analysis of a beginner player (e.g. if I move here he'll capture my piece, or
if I do this he'll have to respond like this or that), so the strategy in my
games is very limited making it not-so-exciting.

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QuantumGood
What I think are the three ESSENTIAL chess books are listed here:
<http://j.mp/bvbRoO> ...The cheapest one is a lot of fun.

I won money in the U.S. Open and the New York Open, but that was only because
I was basically improving quickly and was better than my rating. When I
reached the point I could play speed chess with a clock without looking at the
board (blindfold chess) I had overdone it and pretty much quit.

~~~
trickjarrett
Reassess Your Chess is undoubtedly the best Chess book I ever read

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Tycho
I play on FICS via the iChessHD app on the iPad , which has a number of
annoying bugs but suffices for my needs (ie. Get a ranked online chess game
for free, any time of day, with control over the time parameters). When I
first got the iPad I wasted loads of time playing 15 30 games which took the
best part of an hour, then I switched to 2 7 'speed' game which don't feel
very rushed anymore, and only take 5 mins or so.

I'm an average player among people who play regularly, although when i was a
kid I always beat my friends. I don't have the patience to learn extensive
opening theory, but sometimes I like to tell myself I surprise more
experienced players with my unorthodox tactics and inventive responses...

I'm interested in chess as 1. A sort of daily 'brain-training' task to sharpen
up 2. Finding ways and strategies for beating people who are much more skilled
3. Highlighting blind spots and flaws in my thinking (and others') 4.
Improving visualisation/memory (for instance nowadays I find it easier and
easier to remember entire boards/positions and analyse them in my head.

As you might have guessed, I condsider these skills to be transferrable to
programming.

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dbingham
I used to use the chess.com facebook app a lot to play. But at some point I
stopped. I forget when or why. I think I got fed up with the app engine and
just turned it off for a while. I've since turned it back on, and might start
playing again. I've played since I was a kid and always enjoyed it, but
haven't had a whole lot of time recently.

~~~
alanthonyc
The great thing about these formats is that the time commitment is minimal,
though chess.com does ask you to supply a 2-3 day time limit between moves.

This also explains the great success of _Words with Friends._ I had been
playing that game consistently since I was introduced to it back in March when
I discovered chess. I never played scrabble before, I guess that phase is over
now. I like chess much better!

Hit me up if you can!

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jonbaer
I have been really playing alot for past 2 months.

First studying alot, basic openings, midgames, endgames, simple tactics. But
what got me really hooked was Stockfish (on iOS and Android),
<http://www.stockfishchess.com> ... it is a pretty amazing open source chess
engine. By far the best learning has been through <http://www.jrobichess.com>.
His video analysis is great. In general I still lose alot more than I win but
the studies are great and there is alot to learn.

Also great documentaries to watch ...

Game Over : Kasparov and the Machine :
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLhqmqwy2gw>

Susan Polgar : Brilliant Brain <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WREgHsTr5yE>

Also watching the current games of Magnus Carlsen, Judit Polgar, and Alexandra
Kosteniuk are great.

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hsmyers
I've played tournament chess on and off since the mid-70's and as was pointed
out elsewhere, to get good you need to devote a substantial amount of time to
the game. Not that this is a bad thing, but you do have to ask yourself just
how much time you have to devote to just how many things? I've managed to make
a decent living from time to time as a chess programmer--- don't do the
engines, but did do the interfaces. Starting with John Stanback and Hal Bogner
working on Zarkov, and then later working with Electronic Arts for real money!
I always got a kick out of the fact that I was the lowest rated player in the
project including the manager! The last interface I worked on was for ICC
another interesting project...

~~~
aquateen
Sounds nice to work with chess as a programmer.

I remember about 10 years ago when I was too young to pay for an ICC
subscription, I would continually use a two-week trial by changing the volume
ID on my hard drive.

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ja27
I'd never been very good at it. I could play, but would almost always lose to
anyone that had spent any real time studying chess. Then a couple years ago I
got into it and spent maybe 100 hours on it. Now I know I can demolish anyone
that doesn't really play, but I'm probably at the bottom of any club or group
of serious players.

One innovative tool that helped a lot is <http://chesstempo.com>. It presents
puzzles, but each puzzle has a dynamic rank, so the site is always adjusting
what it gives you to your current skill level.

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thinkdifferent
I played chess a lot in my teenage years and I was very good. Italian Champion
under 12, under 18 and under 20, fide master with 2 international master
norms.

Then I decided to quit. It was incredibly fun, but also a lot of work which is
not going to pay off unless you become a very strong grandmaster. I'm still
thinking what a loss it was not to spend that "teenage energy" into doing
something more profitable.

But it was so fun that I'm thinking about a comeback :)

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starpilot
I play on Yahoo Games. Not any good at it though, despite having read a basic
chess book and gone through the surprisingly thorough Yahoo Chess Strategy
Guide
[http://games.yahoo.com/help/strategy/ch&ss=1](http://games.yahoo.com/help/strategy/ch&ss=1).
It's a fun game if you're more of a spatial thinker (hello designers) or get
bored by more quantitative games like poker.

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jph
I play casually and wrote a simple HTML jquery chess board:
<http://joelparkerhenderson.com/chess/>

The board is just pieces you can drag and drop anywhere. For me, this is more
flexible than Chess.com, Yahoo Games, and other sites with sign in,
membership, Java, Flash, and the like. Feel free to use it. Feedback
appreciated.

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nl
I used to play second board in interschool competition. We were a small
school, but had a really good team (number one board ended up state champion.)
Took a couple of years but we ended up winning the whole thing.

Interestingly, Terrance Tao's brother (Trevor) used to play in the same
competition sometimes.

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richardw
I keep Shredder on the iPhone and usually play with that. I go through phases
of playing it whenever I have a couple minutes free. I like it because you can
keep a game around for a while, only needing to play when you're in the mood.

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aquateen
If you're really interested in getting into chess, check out ICC and FICS.

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Brajeshwar
I play regularly on <http://www.freechess.org/>

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swah
Black coffee w/ as little sugar as I can tolerate in the particular moment of
the day.

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djmattyg007
i used to play all the time. now i only play maybe one or two games a year.
never been much good at it though :(

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Neputys
Chess is a candy for your brain :)

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shareme
I use to play once or twice a week several years ago. I need to get back to
doing that and get rated.

That Bobby Fisher chess open, middle, and end game puzzle book is a great way
to step back into the game despite the major personal flaws that BF had.

