Off book openings

I’ve caught the chess bug again. This is something that I go through roughly once a year. I get excited about playing chess. The problem is though that I always end up doing more reading and studying about chess than I do actual playing, and I think I cause myself to lose interest again.

I’m trying to be better this time. I’ve signed up at a website called Chess.com. There’s a link to my profile there in the sidebar to the right under My Networks. What is cool about this is that you can play online in real time if you want, but even better is you can play what is essentially a correspondence game. That is, if I make a move against my opponent he gets sent an email letting him know it is his turn. He then has a pre-determined amount of time that was agreed upon in the initial setting up of the game, to respond. The default is three days. When he makes his move, then I get an email.

The other neat thing about it is that it has a social networking component. You don’t just sign on and try to find a random opponent, although you can do that too, but instead you can invite friends to join and you can maintain a friend list just like other social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. You can send messages and pictures to your friends, and of course, challenge them to games of chess.

It is really pretty cool, and it’s allowed me to renew an old chess rivalry I had with a good friend of mine – Scott. I’ve been reaching out to other new and old friends as well to join up and play a game with me.

My hope is that I will spend more time actually playing the game against people I know and less time with my nose in a book only pretending to play.

If you are interested in playing, or learning to play, sign up and challenge me to a game.