Chess - Win

In my prior post I had posted that the en.lichess.org community was a little toxic, well, I'm happy to announce the registered community is actually quite nice... so far...

I decided after doing a bunch of the "openings" training (and being bad at it) I'd try a rated game...

I won, and not only did I win, but I had the opponent "Vecky" chat back to me, and it was a nice game, I enjoyed it.

As I said in the chat there, I celebrated with a nice coffee :)

More Chess - Toxic Players

I'm beginning to find the online Chess community a bit more feeble than I remember... I used to play on Yahoo Games Chess, years ago... I even met a lass through it once, seriously, chess got me laid... However, playing on en.lichess.org, I keep having my opponents leave the match!

In this case the chap had the upper hand, my opening went wrong, he moved his bishop aggressively into my centre, but then my knights rescued the situation and he left?!?!?!  Leaving me to just have to wait for his time to end or "claim victory".

Chess & Me

I've always been fascinated by board games, Chess was perhaps the first I obsessed over, and I wasn't bad at playing it... When I was around 10 we had a wooden chess set at home, and I'd spend hours looking at positions, but was  never encouraged that this was a worth while thing to do.

When I was in my early twenties, I came back to Chess and had a few books and bits and bobs for it, spent ages analysing positions once.  It's sort of part of me.

Anyway, I recently came across en.lichess.org, and signed up... I had played a few games and got totally thrashed whilst anonymous... But I did a bunch of their training puzzles (some of which I think I saw better options or at least equivalent options for) and then signed up... Ironically when you sign up their capta check is a chess puzzle, and I kept getting it wrong!

But soon sorted and I started my first game, no pressure, so I went for classic 20 minute (plenty of time) game style.  I have this speed chess, I'm not practised enough for it.

Here's my ending board, did I win... I think I did, but the opponent just left :(

(I'm playing white)

D&D Starter Set

When I was at college I remember briefly trying to play D&D... From a second edition manual, it was hard... The two guys setting up characters with me were baffled and the GM was no help.  A hopeless, pretty boring situation, as none of us had read the players manual and the GM hadn't got a grip on how to play, needless to say I never even touched a D20 let alone rolled anything.

At uni I remember the Student Union Bar one day hosted a Magic introduction, but Magic never appealed to me.

Years later I've been a World of Warcraft player, but the computer games never get to the exploitative and environment freedom D&D promises... Could I pull a brick out the wall in Stormwind and thrown it at someone?.. Nope, can I in D&D... Sure!

So it is that I've come full circle, and I've just ordered the Starter Set for D&D Fifth Edition...

God Help Me.