Current Skill You Are Developing

[Guy Incognito]

Trying to learn piano (again, took lessons in childhood). Bought a Yamaha P65 digital two months ago, and have taken 3 lessons. It's going slower than I'd hoped, but I'm easily frustrated by these things. Teacher is a hot chick, so that's always helpful.

I'd also like to learn a new language, but I'm way too lazy to learn two things at once.

[ElDuque]

Training myself to do ridiculous amounts of pull-ups, chin-up and dips. Because I think it is cool.

No specific long-term goals yet, but I'm gonna try 100 un-weighted dips in <15 minutes manana.

[Anacardo]

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fencing
sex
the way I speak

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could you elaborate on point 3 please

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Why aren't you asking about elaboration regarding point 2?

~ Rick

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I'm gonna ask for elaboration regarding point one. Where at and what weapon(s)?

[Bob Moss]

I've decided to learn how to shave.

[theBruiser500]

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James, my rating is over 1600.

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Any recommendations on picking up chess semi-seriously for the standard person who knows the basics but hasn't played since high school study hall and never really put much effort into true strategic chess thinking?

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Silman and Nunn come to mind as good chess authors. You'll probably be good cause you're good at physics, so can work spatially in your brain, you just need to: play alot of games, and study.

[NajdorfDefense]

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James, my rating is over 1600.

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Any recommendations on picking up chess semi-seriously for the standard person who knows the basics but hasn't played since high school study hall and never really put much effort into true strategic chess thinking?

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My System - Nimzovich
Logical Chess Move by Move
Capablanca's Best Chess Endings
Art of the Middle Game - Keres and Kotov [ftw!]
Art of Attack - V. Vukovic
Seirawan's Chess Tactics
Silman
Chess Fundamentals - Capa

Seriously, just pick up a very good endgame manual, and middlegame book from above, and study tactics, tactics, tactics if you are a beginner. If you can't spot knight forks, pins, skewers, and 3-move mates in advance, you'll always be hopeless. Avoid any openings book until you can play 4 and 5-piece endings correctly and win virtually all won positions easily.

As for me, I'm developing my spin move immediately followed up by left-handed crossover for easy layups in transition {i'm a righty}.

[astroglide]

you can install xbox media center with a copy of mechassault and an action replay, no modchip required.

[viciouspenguin]

To all those aspiring chess players out there,

I'd start off with basic opening concepts, basic tactics, basic endgames. then i'd work on learning a few openings pretty well for both colors, then lots and lots of calculation/tactics. once you get better and play better opponents i'd work on endgames. at lower levels there will be enough mistakes in the opening/middlegame that you rarely need to know more endgame theory beyond the basics. i cant think of the author right now, but theres an author with a very good endgame book series. he has a book just for knight endgames, a book just for bishop endgames, one just for rooks, etc.

if anyone wants some free chess advice post here or PM, i haven't played seriously in a few years but im 2100 uscf, 2100 fide, and my blitz best on icc is ~2600. here are some openings i can help you on (this is my opening repetiore for tournaments): for white, my primary opening is the english, although i am also pretty booked up with 1. e4. i play a lot of quieter variations in the open sicilian, the two knights agains the french (1. e4 e6 2. nf3 d5 3. nc3) the fantasy variation against the caro-kann, and very quiet lines against 1... d5 and 1... nf6. for black, i only play QGD against 1. d4 and 1. c4 and once in a while play the slav. primarily play the sicilian taimanov variation against 1. e4, although i play 1... d5 as well.

[viciouspenguin]

also, avoid silman books - they are crap. as are schiller's books. eric schiller is a complete joke. he calls himself the "world's greatest opening theoretician" or some crap, because he has written dozens of opening books. i played against him in an invitational at the mechanic's (club in SF). i prepared agianst him bigtime (pretty much analyzed one of his books and found a strong refutation to one line he advocated). he ended up offering me a draw like 15 moves into the game. greatest opening theoretician lol. i accepted though because i had good reason to do so (i dont remember why)

i dont remember any good books to read though. i'd study a lot of past games (petrosian, karpov, kasparov, tal, etc). those are always good. i wouldnt trust a lot of the books out there - many of them are very poor and written by struggling chess masters

[gamblore99]

cardo,
I made a thread a while back about fencing. I took your advice and picked sabre. So far its been really enjoyable and I'm glad I took it up, though I had no idea the matches were so fast.