How it all started..

I started learning chess at the age of 14 in the chess-club of my city. It was fun, once a week we had a lesson which I enjoyed much. I had learned the moves of chess because my brother along with my father had taught me at home, but in the club I started learning in a more systemized way. My brother is a very strong player and he used to bring his chess friends at home. I remember how they played countless blitz games at home and how I was not able to comprehend their moves. Unfortunately I had to quit chess at the age of 16. At that time I moved to another country to pursue my dream and study ballet in a academy. I had to give up a lot of things for ballet and chess was one of them.

Now, after 7 years, I started playing chess again in the small local chess club. The visit of a grand master and european champion in our club fascinated me and increased my love for this mental sport.

Chess is a manifold sport. It disciplines the mind and forces it to concentrate. This procedure makes thinking sharper, faster and helps develope an objective way of looking at things. It increases the visualization powers, since a chess player is supposed to "see" all possible ways of continuing a certain position. Imagine that if a single position has 5 possible ways of continuing in the next move, each of these 5 ways might also have other 5 ways of continuing, two moves ahead. This makes a total of 5*5² possible ways which increases the deeper one tries to "see". Apart from the clearly mental aspect of chess, there is also the military one. The game of chess actually has to do with the war of two armies; the object is to capture the king of the opposite army. In order to achieve that one uses soldiers, knights, rooks, bishops and the royal couple of the king and queen. In order to win one needs to coordinate his army in the most intelligent, shortest and thus active way. Thats why chess is also a lesson in self-confidence and strong will.

I am an intermediate chess player, I have never played in official games and I don't train often. But it is fun to play whenever I get the chance and I like to record my games to analyze the mistakes I have done. Since I am loosing my papers all the time, this blog is a nice excuse for me to store the games I play online (mostly in yahoo chess) and to philosophize on the art of chess. My chess idols are Nimzowitch and Alekhine, and my favourite book "My System" (by Nimzowitch).