Chess is EXTREMELY fun at lower levels and the pain starts when you cross higher elo. amirite?

Learn the tactics. Pins, forks, skewers, etc.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

i know all of those.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

ok but do you know the spit roast?

by Anonymous 1 week ago

what about il vaticano?

by Anonymous 1 week ago

what about the almighty spork? rosin actually got one on stream. skewer pin and fork in one move

by Anonymous 1 week ago

do you have a clip of it?

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I want to add to this that it's fun at low levels assuming the people playing are at generally the same skill level. My grandpa was a master and while I slammed my face against the wall a bunch playing him it was not a super fun experience most of the time but really grew my skill. I never got even remotely as good, probably somewhere around the low scholastic range because I play very seldomly and never took it serious... In the last, idk, 5ish years a bunch of my peers decided to start getting into chess and for as much as I love the idea of joining in... because they just barely at the "understanding how things work" stage of chess it's not very fun for either of us to play together because they make so many obvious mistakes and I at least have some idea of strategy even if an actual expert would kick my ass all over the board the exact same way.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Luckily online chess exists and anyone can find an appropriately rated opponent in seconds.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Yeah, if chess is specifically what you are after. Not ideal when you're looking for in person quality time with real life friends ;)

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Sure, if you want to play irl you're gonna have to enjoy either teaching them or being taught by them if there's enough skill disparity. But luckily online chess and resources exist to help bridge that gap, at least if the stronger player isn't actively improving just as quickly. But yeah like most games worth playing, there's a huge range of strength between players and at some point the gap is too big for it to be much of a question of who will win. If you want a fun quality time game where anyone can win, chess isn't a great option unless everyone is reasonably close in skill or at least happy to learn by getting crushed.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I mean sure... But my point isn't that you can't match up with players of similar skill; but that low skill matches are only fun when the players are of similar skill levels.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

but that low skill matches are only fun when the players are of similar skill levels. I don't disagree but there's potential workarounds, fwiw when I play scrubs I generally either am teaching them and giving tips/take backs (much harder to win when you tell your opponent how to refute some of your ideas!) or giving some sort of handicap (usually I just give them plenty of time and myself very little so I mostly have to play on instinct.) And I'll politely reiterate that this is true for basically all games with a high skill ceiling. Not really a problem with chess imho, it's just not Mario Party and isn't intended to be fun with a big enough skill disparity.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Many games are like this. One of the great things about backgammon is that there's lots of skill, you can go just about infinitely deep studying it, but, there's also a big component of luck. A beginner can beat a master in an evening of play, but has zero chance of beating her over a month's worth of evenings. Also, you can get far behind and a stunning reversal is possible.

by ebertlesley 1 week ago

What my dad would do, was if I was clearly losing we would turn the board so I got his pieces and keep playing.

by Apprehensive-Most 1 week ago

yeah i do love chess 360 but even that has some tactics you can analyse. i will agree tho that chess 360 is Fun and shakes things up.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

i had this at a chess club at school. being told "you can't make that move" "why it's legal" "but you'll lose"

by Whitelaney 1 week ago

Try chess 960.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

turns out there are lines there aswell. Especially when you face the loing range bishops

by Anonymous 1 week ago

The other option is just play your friends or something, I'm not sure. 960 at least has some randomization. So hopefully it would be a lot less opening memory

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Play faster time formats

by Lulahane 1 week ago

me when i get 1400 elo blitz only

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I agree. At the higher levels, novel positions don't start until well into the game. When beginners face off, every move is spontaneous ingenuity. That's simply more interesting.

by maryjanegusikow 1 week ago

What I hate about chess is people always think that being good at chess directly correlates to being intelligent. Like if you're a chess master you're a genius, if you're not good at chess you're an idiot. If you're good at chess then that just means you're good at chess.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Always love some jail chess stories. Did you guys play with any unusual rules? I've heard it's common in jail to say when you put your opponent in check (not an unusual house rule) but also when you're attacking their queen. I assume that's to keep tempers calm when someone blunders a queen not seeing it's attacked.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

No unusual rules really. Called when the king was in check but not the queen. You aren't really going to blow up about a game unless it's cheating. You'd be seen as weak and a liability to your car. Mostly it was just used as an indication of who was smart enough to be worth keeping an eye on. Poker too but that wasn't as good because everyone could bluff and the cards weren't in your hands so to speak.

by kuhlmanjohann 1 week ago

Anyone known for insisting on kooky openings? I believe the Grob has a lot of theory developed by a prisoner.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

What's a car in that context?

by Anonymous 1 week ago

It's your chosen group. Depending on your race and if you choose to be in a gang or not, you can usually pick between the dominant gangs in the area then there are races that stick together such as the black car, the wood car, the Mexican or Pisa car, or if you are none of those and don't want to affiliate with a gang, you go to the other car which is just a random amalgamation of everyone.

by kuhlmanjohann 1 week ago

Thanks! So it's a different word for gang then…(?)

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Again, ty

by Anonymous 1 week ago

That will be two soups for putting you on. /j

by kuhlmanjohann 1 week ago

Yes I'm starting to realize this. I started playing a month ago, lost all the way down to 100 elo, now I'm back to 400 and I can play a pretty decent game and still get smacked

by Neither_Wafer 1 week ago

so true but playing at 400 elo and i face people with skill level and now i cant get to 700 eli bruh

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Well, yeah In lower levels you actually play. In high elo is basically 2 instruction lists against each other.

by Intelligent-Fly 1 week ago

Pretty much gets stressful and as you said, you really have to memorize a lot of openings and play that line. It is stressful, that's part of the fun: every move matters. If you're only enjoying it by winning with cheap tricks, it's probably either not the game for you or you might shift your mindset to enjoy climbing the skill curve and winning with good solid chess. Already disagreed about memorizing openings being necessary until you're like 2000+ and even then you can avoid it entirely and only give up maybe 100 elo from what you might have if you efficiently memorized an opening repertoire. People seem to vastly overestimate how important opening theory is. Sure don't play trash, but you don't need a deep thorough repertoire to get to 2000, which is better than all but a small fraction of a percent of active players. By the time you get near that point, you'll naturally learn some openings and memorizing openings will be much much easier than it is when you're 500 because you have vastly more context to understand the moves and far more skill and calculation abilities to understand the lines and ideas behind them. Avoiding opening theory is very very common advice for beginners. It's way less efficient than playing, analyzing, and grinding basic puzzles.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

T-T

by Anonymous 1 week ago

1770 chess . com just so you know and i have fide rating of 1200 which i know isnt much but you get the point.

by Anonymous 1 week ago