Any Chess players out there in DU land? [View All]

[The Straight Story]

I started playing when I was a kid. I sucked at first.

One day I got a book from the bookmobile, a Fred Reinfeld one, and played over some master games. They were a thing of beauty. A few years later my friend Andy in school introduced me to James, who was in the chess club. James beat my butt in the school library. It was an awful game. But from that day on I decided I would be better.

James and I became best friends, and we played 8 hours a day in the summer, often sitting on the phone for hours at a time discussing chess openings, master games, etc. We went to the local chess club, played in tournaments, and went to the library. We wrote a chess program on an old trs-80. James and I are still best friends (I am 39 now, we met when I was 13).

For many years I didn't play chess at all, and have now gotten back into the game. Have a new USCF membership, tournament board, will be helping out at local chess club and tournaments, have a new chess clock, and so on.

So, what do you use computer wise for chess? Here is a brief rundown of some things on my side:

4 processor sun server running gnuchess 5

Laptop running gnuchess and Fritz 8 (and google it if you don't anything about Fritz - it is absolutely awesome for learning and master strength games and beats gnuchess in games I have them play against each other)

Soon to add a dedicated system to just chess software and analysis. So much to learn.

Do you have any chess stories, memories, ideas, favorite openings, etc? Feel free to post it all here!