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Chess Is a Brutal Game That Will Have You Questioning Your Entire Life

Matthew Thiele
4 min readJun 16, 2023

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I still get pissy and think about quitting chess forever after a bad loss.

Photo by Carlos Esteves on Unsplash

I started trying to be a better chess player about six months ago. I’ve never played seriously, and I never had that drive to win that one seems to need to do well at it. I’ve never been very good at it, and I never really had much fun playing it, but my kids were interested in it, so I decided to play more.

I’ve been playing the bots at Chess.com, and I’ve become a more skilled player. I’ve never liked competing against real people, and I don’t think that aspect of the game will ever appeal to me. Computer chess is pretty robust lately, and Chess.com has a variety of bots with different “personalities,” play styles, and skill levels that anyone can play for free.

I’m consistently winning against the Intermediate bots, but I still struggle against the Advanced bots, and I think I’ve topped out. I’m not sure I can get much better, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to win consistently against the Advanced bots.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-robot-playing-chess-8438880/

Chess.com has some great teaching tools as well. My favorite one is the Review function that shows…

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Matthew Thiele
Matthew Thiele

Written by Matthew Thiele

Independent scholar and satirist. Published in Slackjaw, Points in Case, McSweeney’s, Ben Jonson Journal, and other fine publications.

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