Yes i should start a blog, maybe to show the more advanced players how a beginners thought proses es work ,when like myself the beginner takes up the game of chess,I have to say that someone new to chess study,the hardest thing i am finding at the moment his trying to follow a chess opening book i just bought ,what annoys me the most with this book is you will be following the moves diligently; moving the pieces on your board say from move 1 to say move 15 turning the pages as you go only to fined that when you get to move 15 the author will say yes but if your opponent makes this move ,at move say move 7, you have to troll back pages reset your board up and start over ,very tedious and time consuming .now i don't no if that's just me or our other beginners having the same problem following a chess book,personally i find following a video on a particular opening much more easy to follow, how say, good chess joe blogs, PS how do you start a blog, yes i really don't no.

Hi, my name's Ish, I'm 24 and started chess very young. I quickly became the best in my family- supplanting my older brother (then aged 11) as the best player in my primary school. I consistently lost, though, to a Polish guy called Artec who was a friend of our family and used to hum whilst he played incessantly and infuriatingly! A guy at church also gave me a good thrashing, so I knew I wasn't the greatest player in town! I won entry into the Intel Chess Challenge aged 11, but mum refused to let me play as she'd already agreed to let me go to Cub Camp that weekend. I remember begging my mum to let me play and even offering to pay for the camp (at the time, this was 10 weeks' pocket money and a huge amount of money for me!) but she wasn't to be moved. My best friend, who I taught to play and was the number 2 player in our school scored 3/6 in the first round and was eliminated (5/6 needed to get to round 2). I used to score around 90% against him, so I was frustrated not to play. He came into school the next week with 2 trophies in his arm claiming he came 3rd out of 2,000- even though he was 3rd of 6! Can you tell I was jealous!?

Since there was no club around after my primary school's, only a tiny fraction of people were on the internet and there was no chess in secondary school, I gave it up. How different things could have been, we'll never know!

When I was 16, I got Yasser Seirawan's book Winning Chess Tactics out of the library and never looked back! I found a tournament around 10 miles from where I live through Ceefax (the BBC's old terrestrial text-based service), played in the bottom section and scored 0/6! I kept practicing, and now here I am 8 years later. I currently play in the Major section (ECF grade 148), but based on results this year, I may be relegated back to the Intermediate! I played 2 games and got a win and a draw against the guy from church a couple of years back, so I'm sure I've improved since childhood though!

Just made a Wiki for my videos which is here: http://www.chessvideos.tv/wiki/index.ph ... %27_Videos

I aspire to at least be a FIDE Master one day although currently that's a long way away!

I'm Anthea from Colorado. I heard about this site from Brian Wall who keeps posting his games on facebook using the click and move diagrams from here. I want to do that too but I can't figure out how to use it, sad huh. I'm just pretty computer challenged. I've been playing tournament chess for about 20 years now, I've studied with alot of really great teachers/coaches like Jeremy Silman, Dave Gliksman, Brian Wall, etc. My current rating is 1800 give or take 20 points. I don't check it that often, unlike my son who's 1776. I know that cuz he checks it daily! (he's 13)
Nice to meet everyone!
Anthea

Welcome Anthea!

Incidentally, Anthea is the co-author, along with Brian Wall of the charming children's Chess Primer How to Play Chess Like an Animal which I favorably reviewed on Amazon.