I don't quite remember when exactly I started to play chess, but the earliest I can remember was 1987, just before the World Chess Festival came to Saint John in 1988. I was a horrible player in those days. For many years afterwards my interest in chess waned as the age of console video games was soon to begin. It wasn't until the fall of 2002 that my interest was rekindled when Laurie asked me to teach her to play the game. In those early matches of hers I began to appreciate the game in a way that had escaped me as a child. Certain tactics revealed themselves, important precepts became more apparent.
This resurgence in interest (again, many thanks to Laurie) led me to read the excellent book An Invitation to Chess by Irving Chernev and Kenneth Harkness. Not only were things I had suspected about strategy in chess made more concrete through this book, but it also paved the way for some improvement in my game. Mind you, I'm still only at a beginner's skill level, but I was much worse in years past.
Hungry for more information, I scoured the World Wide Web. In addition to everything I could ever want to know about the game we call chess, I found there was even more to the game.
While searching for any information on a mindboggling game called Torus Chess, I stumbled across The Chess Variant Pages, and it was a truly exciting discovery. To think that people had made countless variations on the game of chess in ways I never would have imagined... new pieces, different rules, more than 2 players, boards with unusual dimensions... now I realized that chess was not static, but was changing, evolving, even as we speak!
To conclude, I'm fairly enthusiastic about the game in an amateurish sort of way. I love to play at almost any opportunity (alas, it seems opportunities are too few for my liking!), preferably with people of a similar skill level. If you're getting into chess, or are like me and have a moderately (modestly?) sound grasp of the game, contact me via email and perhaps we can arrange a game. Also, you can find all kinds of chess resources on my links page.
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