I used to like, even love the game of chess. rather: liked it offline. I’ve since been cured of liking the online equivalent, courtesy of chess.com and other such cheater infested platforms (nearly all of them, actually). but like everything once normal, accepted, embraced, and such the internet happens to it. corrupts it, turns it into an Olympian style reality show, makes it Machiavellian AF. nothing’s off limits or impervious to this hyper competitiveness. you see it everywhere nowadays, whether its lifestyle comparisons, beauty, material excess, and what have you.
I even liked yahoo! chess back in its heyday. you could play an honest, one on one. sometimes you’d get your ass torn to shreds, other times you’d be administering that can of whoopass yourself.
I’ve played on chess.com some, I’m not entirely sure what my ratings were but they weren’t like I was some street grandmaster. I played enough to even learn different repetitive styles of various individuals from other countries. like the arrogant approach of eastern European or Russian players. or the crazy aggressive Indonesian ways. forces you to learn, adapt, and play outside of your own comfort zone. it’s not entirely dissimilar to the retro kung fu movies where the hero gets his ass kicked by the evil grandmaster, has to go into hiding to train and develop a new technique which then enables him to finally get his revenge.
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