My brother taught me as a kid and we played a few times. Then I started playing again around the age of 25 with my cousins almost every night on Skype. I started playing consistently though in Vietnam when I found a great group of people who would play chess and drink coffee on Sundays. Sounds perfect to me.
It has allowed me to meet amazing people, think intellectually, and play a game at the same time.
But then I went to play chess off Meetup.com thinking my game was sharp after having played so much recently and having a burning sensation to mentally demoralize someone. I love degrading people (in games) and really just putting them down to sleep. Finishing or really the best word is killing. To kill however, you need to be in the right position and these guys at this chess meet up showed me. I got destroyed en route to a 2-10 record that day. I think we played for about 6-7 hours switching between the 7 or so people there but in summary I got destroyed. At that point, I realized I was in a whole new league - towards the bottom. Which I totally did not expect, I was damn near Grand Master in my mind but these players showed me the truth and exposed my weaknesses.
My openings were horrible and thus lead to unfavorable positioning.
This ties into my life for both my career and personal development.
VK #1 told me it's about positioning. If you can position yourself in a favorable situation then you're chances of success increase dramatically and it's almost impossible to fail unless you lose your focus.
I am starting to realize that chess and life can be viewed, played, and theorized in the same context.
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