Chastity's Chess Challenge

Author: Chastity White Rose

Chapter 2: Chastity’s Recommended Openings
For the sake of keeping this book short, I will not be trying to teach all details about chess notation. Part of this is because I don’t want to explain it wrong. However, all the major chess sites including lichess do keep track of the moves you play in every game and will show you the chess notation. It’s actually very easy to pick up just by looking at examples from your own games. I will be calling moves by their chess notation name but almost every move will also have a picture with it so that there will be no confusion as to what it means.

White takes their turn first in the game of chess. This means that if you are playing as white, you have the unique opportunity to pick the first move that will set the course for the rest of the game! However, there are only a few moves that are considered to be very good. I will show you the two most popular choices that white players use to start the game.

But first, I have an example image that shows the names of all the squares in chess notation.

That image has all the letters and numbers of each square from the white player’s perspective. Look back at this picture because it will help explain a lot of what I mean in the pages after it. The image has the letters in capitals because it looks cool, but when Chess notation is written, capital letters usually refer to which piece is moving while lowercase letters refer to the file (which vertical column a square is on). The numbers are which rank (horizontal row) the square is on. See more on the topic of chess notation in Chapter 7.

Square e1 is where the white king starts the game and e8 is where the black king starts the game. Also look at squares f2 and f7 because those are the squares most vulnerable to attacks that put the king in check. Moving those pawns at the beginning of the game is asking for trouble! The most popular first move for white is e4 (white’s king pawn two squares forward).

The main reason e4 is a popular move is because it allows white’s queen or bishop to get out on the next turn white plays. Most chess masters consider it to be the best move and it is also commonly played by chess engines. But it’s not the only popular move. The second is d4 (white’s queen pawn two squares forward)

Moving this pawn to d4 is popular because it is the start of many different openings that involve getting the dark squared bishop out early in the game. This could be the start of the Queen’s Gambit, Trompowsky Attack, or the London System.

But that isn’t to say there aren’t countless openings that begin with the first and most popular choice I mentioned earlier. If you are playing white, you should decide which of these moves to start with and then you should start with it every time until you get used to seeing how your opponent moves and how they respond to each of your moves. That’s not just my advice but is the advice of chess coach Levy Rozman (GothamChess) who I learned a lot from!

Although studying openings is fun, don’t rely on them so much that you find yourself lost as soon as your opponent does something unexpected. That being said, you should probably have a plan for the first 4 moves at least. Planning ahead requires some experience of playing, winning, and losing games to see what worked and what didn’t.

I find that I win my games more often when I start with e4, but I find myself having more fun when I play d4 as my first move and then try for the Queen’s Gambit, which is my favorite. I will be explaining the Queen’s Gambit opening later on but first I am going to show you the most generic ways to start the game. This will mostly be from white’s perspective but you will find that this method is flexible enough to be mirrored for both players.

The Bishop’s Opening

First, both white and black move their e file pawns two squares for their first move.

This is equally good for both of them because that allows both of them to get their bishops or queens moved out diagonally. Keep in mind that at the beginning of the game, diagonal moves are faster than orthogonal moves. The rooks can’t get out because the pawns in front of them are blocking their movement. For this reason, your early attacks will depend on bishops.

Next, the bishops come out. This means they are both attacking the weak f2 and f7 squares I mentioned earlier. This position is called the bishop’s opening for obvious reasons. If you find yourself in the bishop’s opening position, you have some serious options to consider. If you are playing white, you already have an advantage in this position because it is your turn. You could move the knight to f3 and attack the e5 pawn or you might want to move the queen to h5 and try a scholar’s mate. Keep in mind that the possible moves your opponent can do are endless and that to a certain extent, to show an example, I have to make up possible moves of only one of them just to prove the point I am showing. There is no way of knowing if you will end up in the mirrored bishop setup as shown in the previous image. With that being said, if you EVER DO find yourself in this exact position, I will show you some great possibilities that can come from it. I recommend knight to f3.

Why is this position good for white, you may ask. That’s because this knight move accomplishes several things at once.
1. It attacks the e5 pawn
2. It gets the knight out of the way so the king can castle
3. It prevents the black queen from going to h4 and trying to scholar’s mate white king on f2. Based on my experience, what usually happens after this is that black will move their queen’s pawn to d6 and defend the e4 pawn. Then white will do the reverse and move their queen pawn to d3.
This also allows the bishops to move out that were previously blocked by those pawns. Black will most likely move the bishop to G4 and attack the knight.

This creates a problem for white because if they move the knight, the queen behind it will be captured. Because I value knights more than bishops, I recommend the following. After the bishop attacks the knight, sacrifice your bishop on f7 and put the king in check.

You may wonder why we would sacrifice a bishop. The idea behind this is for the king to capture it so that we lure the king to where the knight can put it in check!

At this point, the king is forced to move again. No matter where the king moves to, it will be white’s turn again and the white queen can capture the black bishop!

At this point, white has lost a bishop but they have also taken a bishop and a pawn. This strategy of sacrificing pieces to gain an advantage is one of my favorite things to do. It highlights the importance of being able to plan ahead in chess. With that being said, I will next teach you my favorite opening for white, the Queen’s Gambit!

The Queen’s Gambit

The Queen’s Gambit sounds like a fancy name, and this name was used for a Netflix show as well. However, this opening was well known before people had televisions, computers, or the internet. The word “gambit” means sacrifice. In this opening white sacrifices a pawn with the hope of getting an advantage later. To some people, it also means a gamble because there is no way of knowing if it will work out the way you want depending on what your opponent does.

The opening starts with each side moving the pawn in front of their queen. Then white moves the pawn on c2 to c4.

In this position, black’s pawn can capture the white pawn and yet it doesn’t appear that white can capture it back, at least not yet. If it does take the pawn, this is known as accepting the gambit. New players will more likely than not take this pawn if they don’t see the trap.

You see, the idea was to distract the pawn and move it away from the center so that white’s king pawn could move two squares forward. Also notice that the white bishop on f1 could also capture the black pawn on c4 next turn, but not so fast, first, black has to choose their next move. The only problem is that there really is no good way for black to stop white from taking their pawn with the bishop. If they try to protect it with another pawn, things can turn out badly. Sooner or later white will capture back the c4 pawn with the bishop and if black tries to stop it, they will only lose more pieces.

My best advice is that if you accept the Queen’s Gambit, also accept that you will lose this pawn and don’t try to defend it by moving the b7 pawn to b5. This has never worked out well for my opponents. Do not let the sequence of the following images happen to you!

I also want you to notice that the previous sequence of moves would still be just as bad if white had decided to move their king’s pawn only one space to e3. There are valid reasons they might do so to add extra protection to the d4 pawn. The d4 pawn is only protected by the queen right now so beware of this in all your games.

If you are the black player, I would recommend against accepting the Queen’s Gambit entirely. It leads to many traps by white. If you do accept it, you will lose your pawn anyway. Don’t waste time with that and instead move out other pawns depending on what pieces you plan to move. Below are the two most common responses to the Queen’s Gambit.

Queen’s Gambit Declined

Slav Defense

Both of these responses allow you to capture the white pawn back if it captures your d5 pawn. More importantly, you are getting pawns out of the way of your other pieces so that they can start attacking white. The Queen’s Gambit Declined is probably slightly better than the Slav Defense because moving the king’s pawn is just generally a great move because then black’s queen and dark squared bishop can move out diagonally and try to attack white.

But a final note is that accepting or declining the Queen’s Gambit does not lose for black by any means, but accepting it allows white to get both of their center pawns and allows them to start moving both bishops out very quickly. White already has the advantage, don’t give them more help if you are the black player. But if you are the white player, I have plenty of advice on what to do. However I may have to add more to this book later.

Now one thing you may have noticed is that the Queen’s Gambit started with moving the Queen’s Pawn (d4) instead of the King’s Pawn (e4) like in the previous example with the elaborate bishop sacrifice. Queen pawn openings are just far more fun to play because the game takes longer and my opponents get frustrated. e4 is better for quicker wins but is so cliché that I got tired of playing it and became a d4 player for my first move.

The London System

I am not the first person to say that the London System is a solid opening. In fact, it’s probably the best opening to teach a beginner for playing the white pieces. The first move will always be d4. The London System is actually quite different than the Queen’s Gambit because your goal is not an early attack nor sacrificing pieces. The goal is to build a defensive structure. Look at the following picture.

It takes a total of 7 moves to achieve this setup but it can usually be done quite easily no matter what black does. If your opponent makes bad moves and you can capture their pieces then that should take priority over arranging the pieces like this picture. For example, if your opponent moves their king’s pawn two squares forward to e5, then just take it with your d4 pawn!

It’s totally easy to see how a player might be used to moving their king’s pawn two squares and might mistakenly let white’s d4 pawn take it. This completely disables black’s development besides costing them a pawn. They can’t move their knight to f6, nor can they move the pawn in front of their queen either one or two spaces (because of en passant rule). If black makes this mistake, then they already have a huge disadvantage. This is not like the Queen’s Gambit because there is no advantage to offering white a free pawn. If black does this, then take that pawn and then build the rest of the London Fortress even though there will be a missing pawn at the head of the pyramid of pawns. But most of the time, your opponent will not make a mistake as bad as the previous example. They will most likely do something smarter such as knight to f6.

In this position, we see that the black knight is trying to prevent our king’s pawn from going to e4. That’s totally fine because that is not what we will do in the London system. We will continue to build our setup. In this position we should next move the bishop to f4.

It’s worth mentioning that bishop to f5 would also be a good move, and would be called the Trompowsky attack. However, since I am teaching the London System, we will stick with bishop to f4 for now.

Because of the fact that we have disabled the enemy king’s pawn from moving two squares, most players will instead move their queen’s pawn two squares instead. Remember, moving the pawns in front of the king or queen is almost always a good idea. With that in mind, our next move should be pawn to e3 because this is the next step in building the pawn pyramid, and it also adds an extra defender to the e4 pawn and Bishop.

Keep in mind that this is still early in the game and that chess openings only take you so far. However, white has a really good winning chance in this setup. For example, black may try to offer the black version of the Queen’s Gambit by pawn to c5. However, doing so allows us to take their knight on b8!

The rook can take our bishop but we have eliminated one of the enemy knights. You may be wondering, why sacrifice the bishop to take down a knight? The reason I do this is because in my experience, knights are better than bishops. Each chess player has different opinions on this, but here is my own reasoning on why knights are more powerful than bishops.
1. Two knights can defend each other, unlike bishops which are always on different colored squares.
2. Knight attacks cannot be blocked, they are therefore better for checkmating in many cases I have seen.
3. Knights look like horses, which are my favorite animal. I prefer to protect my horses.
Maybe you disagree with my advice. However, the main point is that to play the London System, you should get your pieces out similar to the picture of the 7 moves.

All of what I have talked about so far is openings that white chooses to play. If you are the black player, what should you do? For one thing, you can expect that white will most likely play e4 for their first move, so I will next cover the French Defense.

The French Defense

The French Defense is my main opening when playing as the black player. I will make the case for why it deserves more credit as an opening even though it is less popular than the Caro Kann (which may be covered later)

This is the start of the French Defense. White has moved king’s pawn to e4 and we are moving our king’s pawn only one square instead of the usual two.

I know it looks weird and uncomfortable to move a pawn only one square when it could have moved two, but the reason for this will become clear very soon.

Almost all the time, white will move their queen’s pawn two squares and in this case you will copy them.

In this position, white has the option of capturing the d5 black pawn. If they take it, it is called the exchange variation of the French Defense. White will capture the pawn but then we capture it right back. Then the board will look like this.

As the black player, this is precisely what you wanted to happen because now the path is open for you to move either of your bishops or your queen out if you need to.

The other alternative is when white does not take the pawn and instead advances it to e5.

This is called the advanced variation of the French Defense, not because it is advanced in the sense of complicated but because the white pawn has advanced instead of capturing. When this happens, the best thing to do is to move a pawn to c5 and offer the “black queen’s gambit” and hope that white takes it so you can capture back with the bishop. From that point the game continues like normal and it follows much of the same logic as I use when I play the Queen’s Gambit.

For example, the following sequence of images shows exactly how a checkmate can happen quickly if white does not defend the weak f2 square next to their king.

Obviously, the game doesn’t always end this quickly but as you see the French Defense is based on the same logic as the Queen’s Gambit by offering a pawn with the hope of lining the bishop and the queen up to attack the weak square. At the least, this will put the king on the run, and sometimes even a checkmate if your opponent doesn’t defend correctly.

In this chapter, I have shown my favorite openings to play. Don’t think that you know everything about how these will turn out for you in your games because the possibilities are infinite. You may find your own style and even invent a new opening no one has seen before!

But the openings I have recommended are those that I have had the most success with and I have an advantage with them from practice. That’s why I am qualified to teach them. I also have videos on my YouTube channel where I have gone more in depth with them.
Chapter 3: Chess variants
March 7, 2025
Chapter 1: The Basic Rules of Movement

Hello, I am Chastity White Rose and I am a chess player. I am one of many people who love the game of chess because it is one of the best games for playing with other people and understanding how their mind works.

The actual rules of chess are not very hard to learn. There are 6 types of pieces, and they have very specific rules of how they move that never change. Compared to the complexity of most video games that people play, chess is actually very simple because there is a lot less to learn and remember. If you have played Pokemon, Final Fantasy, or Tetris, then you are smart enough for chess!

But chess is not specifically a video game. It’s a board game that has only recently turned into a video game because there are chess programs for every machine you can imagine. You can play from a regular Personal Computer or a Smart Phone these days and play with other people all over the world through the internet. Later on, I will talk about some of the best sites to play chess online.

But first, a basic explanation of the goal of chess. The way to win the game of chess is to checkmate the opponent’s king. Checkmate means that you are attacking the king and it has nowhere to move to escape and would be captured on the next turn. I will show examples of what this looks like later on.

For now, I intend to teach you the basic rules of how each piece moves by isolating them from the other pieces and highlighting the empty squares by coloring those squares in green. Just think “green means go,” as in a traffic light.

Below is a picture of what the chessboard typically looks like if you are playing a computer chess program. This picture shows how the pieces are arranged. The chess set used is called Merida, and it is one of the piece sets available on lichess.org, where I play chess online.

I will next explain the names of each of these pieces and how they move.

The first piece that you will want to learn is the pawn. The pawns are the most abundant piece on the board, and each side (black and white) has 8 of them to start with. They only move in one forward direction (away from the side they started on)

Pawns can move one square forward, except that they can also move two spaces on their first move. Notice that the left pawn is in its starting position and has not moved yet. Because of this, it can move to either square in front of it highlighted in green, but only on this first move.

Pawns capture other pieces differently than the way they move onto empty spaces. They capture only one space diagonally forward. Consider the following image:

The white pawn can capture either of the two black pawns on the blue squares because they are diagonally one space in front. Notice that the white pawn cannot capture the pawn exactly one space in front. It can only move that way if the square is empty.

The previous two pages contain everything you need to get started with moving pawns. There is another rule called en passant that I will cover later in the special rules at the end of this chapter because it is quite rare to see. The main thing right now is to learn how each piece moves. Also, I want to explain my convention of how I use color in this book.

Green Squares are for empty spaces which a piece can move onto. I will use them as illustrations of how each piece moves.

Blue squares are for showing when a piece can capture other pieces on those squares.

Red squares may be later used to explain spaces that a king cannot move onto because he would be in check and could be captured. Remember, if the king is captured, then the game is over, and whoever captured him wins. I am also considering the use of red squares for examples of bad moves in future examples.

Unlike the pawns which have a special capturing rule different than how they move onto other spaces, every other piece moves and captures the same way. So take comfort in knowing it gets easier from here once you understand pawns.

For these next examples, I will show the movement rules using a single piece on the board and highlight all the squares in green where that piece can move.

The rook moves orthogonally. That means it can move up/down and left/right as many squares as it wants. If there are any pieces on those squares, it captures the first one it hits and then stops.

The bishop is the opposite of the rook because it moves diagonally.

Notice that because of this, a bishop can only move onto 32 of the 64 squares on the chess board and always remains on the same color as what it started on. Remember, all official chessboards have light and dark squares of the checkerboard pattern.

Next, I will introduce my favorite chess piece. It is called the knight, but it actually looks like a horse. It moves in a way that is called hippogonally. As it turns out, hippo actually means horse, and the hippopotamus means river horse. The knight is called a knight because knights often rode horses in battle. In older chess versions, it was simply called a horse.

The knight has an unusual form of hippogonal movement. It jumps over other pieces but in a shape that looks like an L Tetris block. It may seem odd to describe it, but I will have a picture on the next page that includes an example of how a knight moves. But before that, I want to give my answer to the ancient debate between chess players over whether the knight or the bishop is a more powerful piece. If you are going to lose one or the other, each player has their preference of which to protect.

My personal opinion is that the knight is more valuable. It is not as easy to checkmate with as other pieces, but I protect mine religiously because it is the ONLY piece that can simultaneously attack 8 pieces at one time. Because this piece is special, I will have to show some examples later on of how to use it effectively.

See the image below to get an example of all the places a knight can jump to. It can move to 8 spaces if it is near the center of the board. It moves 1 square orthogonally and then one square forward diagonally from that direction.

This movement of jumping over other pieces is unique to the knight. Using it effectively is a challenge because it is harder for new players to visualize it. Consider coming back to this page for a visual reminder of it.

The queen is the most powerful piece in the game because she has the combined powers of a rook and a bishop! See below the example of all the places that the queen can move to!

As you might guess, the queen is what most people rely on to win the game because she is so powerful. Players try to avoid losing the queen. She may only be a single piece but can wipe out an army unless the opponent has a plan to stop her!

The king is exactly like a queen, but it can only move one square in any of the 8 directions. It is also the most important piece that decides who wins or loses the game. If the king is being attacked and cannot move to a legal square, the player who owns the king loses the game.

In this next image, we see that the white queen is directly next to the black king. The black king has only one empty square that it could move to, but the queen attacks that square too and would still capture the king. That means it is checkmate! The white player wins in this example.

You may wonder why the king can’t simply capture the queen. That is because then the bishop would then capture the king. Two or more pieces can easily gang up on a king and then it is game over. There are times, however, when only one enemy piece can checkmate the king if that king is blocked by its pieces.

Consider the following image of a checkmate that is shown from the black player’s perspective. If you are playing the black pieces, they will be closer to you. That is to simulate what it would look like from above on a real chessboard.

In this picture, you can see that white moved two of its pawns, and black also moved its queen over so that it is in a direct diagonal direction from the king. This position is checkmate because the other white pieces block the white king from moving to a safe spot. It also cannot move anything in the way.

This form of checkmate is called the fool’s mate. It only happens if the white player is being a fool and traps themselves. Normally, you would not want to move those pawns unless you had already given yourself an escape route or moved other pieces that could resist the queen’s attack. The fool’s mate is more common than you think, and I include it so that you don’t fall into it.

Now you know all of the most important rules of chess to get started with. There are two more rules called castling and en passant. However, I think it is best to get started playing chess and then learn about those rare cases later on. In the next chapter, I plan to show examples of what your first moves might be to get the game started. You can choose any legal move while it is your turn in the game of chess, but some moves are more likely to be successful than others. The previous example of the fool’s mate shows what pawns you may not want to move right at the start of the game.

For now, remember that you can get started playing chess today! To get started playing online, I recommend lichess, the world’s best free chess server with no ads. Go to the following link and there are interactive lessons that allow you to practice moving the chess pieces.

https://lichess.org/learn

In fact, the depth of learning tools they offer you is far beyond what I have included in this chapter. However, I wish to point you in the right direction to a site you can use that will not scare you away by telling you to buy a premium membership or show ads constantly advertising products like Viagra, Burger King sandwiches, or laundry detergent. Nothing is worse than being distracted when you are trying to learn the number one board game in the world.

And on that note, that is precisely why I paid for an upgraded plan on my wordpress blogs for the purpose of removing ads. I want to teach chess without my students or followers exposed to anything I find unethical and that I don’t have control over.

Playing chess online is a good way to get started because it is unlikely that you will have another person available 24/7 willing to play with you at a time that is convenient for you.

Also, lichess does have a mobile app for cell phones, but I recommend starting on a regular desktop or laptop PC because using a mouse is much easier than tapping on a tiny cell phone screen. It can be done, but the chance of mistakes is higher. However, I have had great success playing on my iPad because it has a much larger screen size.

Try practicing playing a few games and then continue to the next chapter to see my suggestions on starting moves to help you have a chance at winning more often.

Also, if you find yourself liking the game of chess, I do recommend creating an account on lichess because then you can challenge anyone or add them as a friend. Lichess is not just a site for playing chess. Lichess is an entire social network that also keeps track of all your games so that you can look back and see what went wrong. You can also follow other players and add them to your friends list to challenge them to a game conveniently.

Below is the link to my profile:

https://lichess.org/@/chastitywhiterose

Send me a challenge any time and I will respond when I am available. My challenge is to teach people about the game of chess and help them improve so that they can beat me. That way, even if I lose the game, I still win as a teacher.

I will finish this chapter by explaining the en passant and castling rules. These tend to confuse new players. It does not help that they conflict with normal pawn and king movement as previously described.

En Passant

Because a pawn can move two squares on its first turn, there is a special rule called en passant, which allows capturing the opponent’s pawn AS IF it had moved only one. Consider the following picture. The black pawn just moved two squares from its starting position. The blue square is where the white pawn can move to and capture the pawn “in passing” (which is what “en passant” means in French).

The idea is that the pawn would have captured the pawn while it was moving through that square. The En Passant rule helps compensate for the limitations of a turn-based game. This rule only applies to pawns and only on the turn immediately after a pawn has moved two squares on its last turn.

Castling

Remember when I said a king only moves one square at a time? Most of the time, this is true. Although this makes no sense, there is a rule that allows a king to move two squares in one turn. Consider the setup below.

Because there are no pieces in between the king and rooks and because the king and rooks have not moved in this game, they are allowed to do a one-time “castle” move where the king and the rook both move. The king moves two spaces towards the rook, and then the rook goes to the square the king skipped over!

King side castle

Queen side castle

Don’t let these special rules confuse you too much. They are a bit nonsensical. In fact, I would compare them to the T spin triple rules in Tetris. On a related note, Tetris is actually a really good game, too. Tetris is my favorite video game, but it is not as easy to play as chess because Tetris requires quick reflexes and planning in mere seconds.

Chess is more of a game for slow, careful thinkers. Although some play speed chess, I don’t recommend trying to play fast for beginners. Focus on the quality of moves rather than how many moves you can make in a minute. Also, play without time limits or choose reasonable time limits. I play 30-minute live games against other people online, and my rating for classical chess is higher than rapid, blitz, or bullet chess because I am slow to move and prefer to think and make the best move.

Time limits are artificial inventions made for the convenience of society. Don’t rush through chess the same way everyone in society forces you to be fast and cause accidents in the real world. I work at Walmart, so I know what happens when employees are rushed. Products get put in the wrong spot, and injuries happen if people value only speed and forsake everything else.

Chess, or any game for that matter, should be for fun, not as a job you do because someone else is forcing you to. No matter what, you must remember that!

Chapter 2: Chastity’s Recommended Openings

March 3, 2025
Chaste Chess Demo_Chastity vs Judena

This is the first post of uploading a video to my wordpress blog. This is a short video I recorded to demonstrate my new Chess game I made for animations. I have to play both sides myself and then it generates the source code to replay the moves. Then I create a demo function in the source code and recompile with the new function being called.

Chess pieces with trailing rainbows

Although this may look like a simple video, it stands out as unique to me because no other existing Chess program makes animations in this style. I had to do a lot of programming failures before I got it just right, but I am pleased with the result.

March 2, 2025
Each time I was rejected by a person or employer, I learned that I was not in the right place. A smart Chess player must learn from their losses and not keep making the same mistakes.

The Navy was not for me, Hy-Vee was not for me, and the National Records Center was not for me. My place of employment right now is at Walmart, but my true place is the Chess board where there is no discrimination and even a lowly pawn can become a Queen.

Daily writing prompt
What experiences in life helped you grow the most?
View all responses

March 2, 2025
Series Title: Will Chuck Find His Mate?
Series Logline

An autistic Chess player wants to teach Chess to people in his town, but his plans to generate interest in the game don’t work as expected. By hiring an actress, he succeeds at inspiring others to play Chess, but his social awkwardness and the prejudice of society may cause him to lose both his Chess business and the woman who fell in love with him.

Overview

This show follows Chuck as he tries to come out of his introverted shell in order to teach people Chess. He fears people, but he also wants to bring back his favorite game, even if it means going in public. This story turns into a Romantic Drama because Chuck gets the idea to hire a woman from a dating app to help him teach Chess. It starts as a business relationship but then turns into something else. Through this experience, Chuck overcomes some of his social inability but also shows he eventually succeeds in getting people excited about Chess.

Concept

This show stands out because to my knowledge, there isn’t anything like it because it is meant to teach people the rules of Chess but also show why it is enjoyable from a psychological point of view. The idea is that Chuck is a master of navigating pieces on a chessboard but that navigating the real world proves to be more challenging than any game of Chess. The show is meant to inspire introverted autistic people to share their passions while also showing neurotypicals an inside look at how an autistic person thinks. If the series fails to do that, the second hope is that it may inspire people to play Chess in a similar way that the Queen’s Gambit series on Netflix did. However, this is not based on that series because I have not watched it.

Characters

Chuck

Chuck is a lonely single man who does not have much of a social life outside of playing Chess online and occasionally other multiplayer online role playing games. Because he seeks connection with real people, he tries to teach Chess to people. However, his social awkwardness and autistic brain cause most people to be suspicious of him, and they assume Chuck is dangerous. Chuck needs someone else to help him appear more normal in society.

Chuck is afraid of people and, therefore, limits going out of his apartment in most cases. His world is entirely the internet. He is a computer programmer who has made several applications and games that provide him with a constant income. He works for himself because no company will hire him. Unfortunately, Chuck never even got his high school diploma because he was homeless in his teen years after being kicked out of his parent’s house.

An unfortunate rumor spread by the boys at school resulted in his parents and teachers finding out he was gay. Therefore, he was expelled from school and disowned by his parents when he was 14 years old. He lived by himself in the woods until he was 18 and then managed to get a job as a janitor and live in a homeless shelter. Over the years, he used the internet to teach himself everything he wanted to know about computers, games, and religion.

At the beginning of the story, he is 40 years old and has no friends or family. He thinks he will never have a family because Chuck has no relationship with his parents, and he doesn’t try to find a partner because he is too afraid of human contact because of the rejection of his parents and school. He is incredibly smart at Chess and Shogi and writes blog posts about strategies for winning these games. The comments he receives on his writing and videos help him to interact with people socially, but only from the safety of his computer in his studio apartment.

Laura

Laura is a hopeless romantic who has joined Tinder, hoping to find a future husband and live happily ever after. She has received many unwanted messages from men she is not interested in. However, Chuck’s message catches her attention because he is offering her a paid role as an actress to pretend to be interested in learning Chess. Thrilled at the idea of having the closest thing to a date so far and not being required to have sex with someone, she accepts.

Laura is quite surprised that Chuck seems only interested in Chess and computer programming. Chuck is the first man she has met who does not make comments about the appearance of her body or request to have sex with her.

Laura was raised in a “Christian” home until the age of 12 when her father raped her. She took this as a sign that her father was too hypocritical to be a follower of Jesus. Laura ran away from home and became rebellious and anti-religious. She survived by stealing food, lying, and later became a prostitute because she had no means to get a job or even finish high school. Laura used every means to obtain money regardless of morality. She had no identification documents, such as a birth certificate or social security card, because obtaining them would require parental consent. She refused to risk being raped by her father, so she never made any attempt to contact her family.

When she turned 18, she contacted the police and Social Security Administration about obtaining her birth certificate and social security card. As a legal adult, she was able to get them without parental consent. She applied to various jobs but was always rejected because she was homeless and had no address. She lived on the streets and eventually got a job at a pizza shop. She was trained to make pizzas and take orders from customers. The owner understood her situation and let her work regardless of her homeless status. After some time of holding this job and having a stable income, she was able to rent a cheap studio apartment.

Laura still wants to know what it would be like to have a family. She is still a member of Tinder from when she used to date men only for financial advantage, but she is looking for a future husband without much luck. That is why Laura was quite surprised when Chuck messaged her about Chess. Though she wasn’t sure where this would lead, this man was clearly different.

Simon

Simon is a young boy who does not fit in with other children. He usually talks about Minecraft, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and other games to kids his age who would rather play in the dirt or play sports that he is not physically adept at performing. However, Simon likes to learn games requiring strategy and complex tactics using his mind rather than his body. For this reason, when he sees Chuck and Laura with a Chessboard, he wants to know what this game is about because he has never seen it.

Simon is socially very awkward and has a habit of talking to strangers about video games, cartoons, his favorite stuffed animals, or whatever he is thinking about at the time. Children get annoyed by him, and adults tell his parents to get him checked for autism. He is only 9 years old, but he reads a lot of books and strategy guides for completing video games. His parents love him and tend to be very protective of him because he must be watched so he does not wander off with strangers and get kidnapped.

His favorite place is the park because he likes to swing on the swing set and climb on the monkey bars. Most of the time, his mother or father stays at the park while reading a book and lets him play at the park for an hour or two after school. His life changes when he meets Chuck and Laura because they seem as trustworthy as his parents, and he wants to know what game they are playing. For some odd reason, Chuck explains the game to him in a way that he understands without trying to dumb it down and assume he can’t understand because he is a kid. This kind of respect is what Simon has wanted all his life.

As much as Simon loves his parents, he does not always get along with them because the truth is that he is so intelligent at math and games that they never seem to know what he is talking about. His parents love him but don’t know what he is because it seems like he is from another world. What they don’t know is that Simon is an autistic savant who cannot perceive other people’s emotions. Simon can predict what his opponents will do in games because he has a photographic memory and can play movies in his head of anything he has seen before. He knows humans are quite predictable and expects them to behave the same way they have in the past.

Locations

Two main locations in this series are of interest. The first is Chuck’s studio apartment where he works on his computer programming projects and plays online Chess. Chuck has very few possessions, so he has a lot of space even though his apartment is small. The second location which we will see a lot is a local park where he goes to play Chess with Laura. The exact details of the park are mostly irrelevant but it must have a table where it is possible to place a chessboard. For shooting purposes, the audience would not even notice if the different episodes were shot at different parks as long as the design of the tables was similar.

Episode Guide/Springboards
1. Over the Board
We see Chuck in his apartment with a chessboard and notebook. He has his chessboard set up nicely, but he has no one to play with. He walks around the table and plays each side as best as he can. He is notating the moves on paper so he can later replay them back. He becomes frustrated at the fact that he finds no challenge because he knows all of his moves and wants someone to play with. He packs up his chessboard and pieces into his backpack and sets on a quest to find someone in his town who knows how to play Chess.
1. Nobody cares about Chess
Chuck walks around town with only his large checkerboard-styled backpack, which also contains his real Chess set inside. He tries talking to people at the mall, grocery stores, the library, and even the local high schools and elementary schools. Much to his surprise, nobody knows how to play Chess. If they have heard of it at all, they say that they heard it was hard to learn. Chuck offers to teach everyone he meets, but people dismiss him because he just looks like a creepy 40-year-old man walking around with a backpack.
1. Resignation and New Idea
Chuck is frustrated trying to find someone to play Chess with and goes back home to play Chess online as he usually does every night. He wins all his games and yet finds that the experience is lacking. The most social interaction he gets is the occasional chat message saying, “Good Game”. He has a list of friends on chess.com and lichess.org, but they are usually far away, and he wants to play people over the real chessboard as he sees in the official tournament videos or friendly games between the famous YouTubers he watches. Finally, he gets the idea that if he wants to find someone local, he could try a dating app because they are designed for people to meet in the same area.
1. Chuck joins Tinder
Chuck had never used any dating apps before, so he downloaded Tinder because he had heard it was popular. He sets up a profile and scrolls through lots of people. Finally, he notices the profile of a woman named Laura, who says she loves walking in nature and reading books. He considers her as someone smart enough to be perhaps interested in Chess, so he messages her. Laura is surprised to receive a message from a stranger asking if she would like to play Chess at the park. At first, she declines because she has put her dating life on hold and prefers to be alone unless there is money involved. When Chuck replies and offers her 50 dollars if she can just meet him at the local park, she accepts because she needs the money.
1. Why do you play Chess?
Chuck and Laura are at the park. Chuck teaches Laura all the rules of Chess in less than 30 minutes. Surprised by how simple it is to learn, she asks Chuck why he has an interest in such a simple game. Chuck explains that Chess is the perfect board game because it is less complicated to learn but that the competition of two minds trying to outsmart each other is where all the challenge comes from. Chuck does not play games of chance and explains that he prefers to play a game where he wins not by getting lucky but by making the right moves. This information inspires philosophical discussions about video games, card games, and board games.
1. The Beginning of Romance
On multiple occasions, Chuck and Laura go to the park and sometimes shop at the mall. They talk for hours about books, games, movies, and music. Laura is continually surprised how no matter what the topic is, he somehow manages to turn it into a comparison to a Chess game he has played. She starts to see his point of view that life really is like a game of Chess because each move affects the next. During one of their Chess games at the park, some children come over to the table and ask about the game Chuck and Laura are playing. Chuck explains how the pieces move and what it means to checkmate the king. Laura sees that Chuck likes to teach children and wonders what he would be like as a father. She really likes Chuck now that she has known him for some time.
1. The First Fight
Laura asks Chuck if he has ever had children or any past relationships. He does not want to tell her the truth about his struggles in life and being a closeted gay person. Instead, he tells her that he is better off alone and that he was never looking for a romantic relationship but a way to springboard his business of teaching Chess. Laura does not take the news as well as he expected. She yells at him for leading her on all this time, and yet he is clueless because he had to pay her to even meet him the first time, and so he did not expect her to actually be interested in a relationship. Laura storms off and leaves Chuck alone with his autistic brain and Chess set wondering what he has done wrong to upset Laura.
1. The Accusation
Chuck still goes to the park with his chess set, cell phone, and book most days of the week. A boy named Simon, who is used to seeing Chuck with Laura, asks where Laura is. Chuck tells him that he and Laura fought, but he doesn’t know what he did wrong. Simon asks to play Chess with Chuck, and they have a lot of fun until Simon’s father, Dirk, comes along and tells Simon to get away from the stranger. Not knowing the context, Dirk reports to the police about a suspicious man at the park. The police also jump to false conclusions because of the high crime rate in the area. This results in the brief arrest of Chuck until someone comes along to prove that he is not a danger to children.

Contact Information

chastitywhiterose@gmail.com

(816) 844-2077

https://chastitychesschallenge.wordpress.com/
March 2, 2025
Chess should end in checkmate
In this post, I will be sharing something that may be useful to players about the nature and reliability of Chess databases. This is a topic that I am studying deeply as a Chess coach. I will be using the open source program pgn-extract to assist me in sharing some stats about the most well known free database, Caissabase. I downloaded it through En Croissant. I have to say that both of these programs are free and open source. As a rule, I promote free and open source software because I believe that Chess should be free for all and I don’t believe someone needs to spend money on expensive Chess programs for analysis.

Even in the largest Chess databases, very few games end in a checkmate. Because of this, it is necessary to extract only the ones that do end in checkmate because it is the proper way to win the game. The game ending because somebody ran out of time tells us nothing about the quality of the moves of that game.

pgn-extract ../BigData/caissabase.pgn -ocheckmates_caissabase.pgn –checkmate

For example, on my machine, the database called Caissabase is

3.53 GB (3,791,607,570 bytes)

After filtering to checkmates only with the previous command, the new size is

190 MB (199,970,816 bytes)

The final output of the pgn-extract command above was

263966 games matched out of 5397923

The reason I am sharing these stats is because it serves as evidence that most Chess databases suffer from several drawbacks.
1. Players agree to draws to save time.
2. Players lose when their clock runs out in time matches, even if they have a completely winning position.
3. Players simply give up after they have lost their queen and have been known to resign even when there is a chance to win.
Because of these 3 reasons. I recommend always filtering your reference databases to games ending in checkmates. In fact, aside from the fact that your analysis of games will be more reliable, this method can save a lot of disk space. For this reason, I have replaced Caissabase with the newer copy on my PC because I am sadly running out of space on this laptop. I expect this information will help people save disk space and also to get better data from the databases they use for analyzing games played both by themselves and also the famous Chess masters.
February 25, 2025
ChasteBase: Slav Defense
This is part of my series of notes on the most common positions I find myself in when playing the Queen’s Gambit. This is my favorite opening when playing the white pieces and I have been studying it for some time. The act of writing things down helps me organize my thoughts and memorize what I have learned.

The format of these notes is as follows:
- Name of Opening/Variation
- Move list in Chess notation
- One or more paragraphs of notes
- Evaluation of good or bad moves from this position
Slav Defense

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6

I must admit that I have not studied the Slav Defense as much as I have the Queen’s Gambit Declined or Queen’s Gambit Accepted. However, I do have two recommendations for white moves here.
- Nf3 is a solid move because the knight will certainly be involve in the game at some point and is not under immediate threat.
- Bf4 is a good idea here because we can target the knight on b8 now that the c pawn is not in the way. We have a lot of options for where the bishop can go from here. It is a safe move at this point with no real downsides. Don’t hesitate to kill the knight with the bishop unless you are player who prefers to keep your bishops alive. There is some matter of preference when it comes to the value of knights vs bishops.
As I play more games in the Slav defense, I may have more to say here. The Slav Defense has its own merits even though it is not as popular as other responses to the Queen’s Gambit.
February 18, 2025
ChasteBase: Queen’s Gambit Accepted
This is part of my series of notes on the most common positions I find myself in when playing the Queen’s Gambit. This is my favorite opening when playing the white pieces and I have been studying it for some time. The act of writing things down helps me organize my thoughts and memorize what I have learned.

The format of these notes is as follows:
- Name of Opening/Variation
- Move list in Chess notation
- One or more paragraphs of notes
- Evaluation of good or bad moves from this position
Queen’s Gambit Accepted

1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4

The majority of my wins while playing white come because black has accepted the Queen’s Gambit. White has 4 really good moves in this position, 3 of which involve plans to capture back the pawn on c4.

! Good moves for White
- e4 is the most obvious good move here. Moving the king’s pawn here allows both of white’s bishops to get out. White will most likely take back the pawn on c4 if black doesn’t come up with a defense for it quick.
- Nf3 is a way to delay deciding what to do with the c4 pawn after it is accepted. This remains a popular option because white may want to later combine the knight and bishop for an attack on f7 but has not decided what they will do with their e pawn yet.
- e3 Moving the e pawn only one square
- Qa4+ The white queen puts the black king in check and also guarantees that it can take the c4 pawn regardless of what black does to get out of check. The only danger is the fact that the queen could be under attack later if it comes out this soon.
? Bad moves for White

There are really no obviously bad moves in this position unless someone was trying to lose the game on purpose.
February 18, 2025
ChasteBase: Queen’s Gambit Declined
This is part of my series of notes on the most common positions I find myself in when playing the Queen’s Gambit. This is my favorite opening when playing the white pieces and I have been studying it for some time. The act of writing things down helps me organize my thoughts and memorize what I have learned.

The format of these notes is as follows:
- Name of Opening/Variation
- Move list in Chess notation
- One or more paragraphs of notes
- Evaluation of good or bad moves from this position
Queen’s Gambit Declined

1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6

If black declines the Queen’s Gambit with e6, there are some things white must look out for. First, by moving the e pawn, black allows their dark squared bishop to get out next turn. This can possibly put the king in check and/or pin the knight if it has moved to c3. Therefore, all evaluation of moves should consider this threat.

! Good moves for White
- c5 By advancing the c4 pawn to c5, black is prevented from getting their dark squared bishop out entirely. I recommend this as the best move because now both of black’s bishops are prevented from getting out. They already blocked their light squared bishop on e6 and now our c5 pawn prevents them from moving the dark squared bishop there unless they are prepared to get killed by the d4 pawn in response.
- a3 is not the most agressive move but it is a nice defensive measure to prevent the dark squared bishop from coming to b4. This move should be done if white wants to safely move their knight to c3.
- Nf3 Moving the knight to f3 is particularly good in the Queen’s Gambit Declined position because it is safe here and can possibly move to e5 next turn. It also means we have not committed to whether we will move the e pawn one or two squares.
? Bad moves for White
- Nc3 Whatever you do, don’t try moving the knight to c3 on this turn unless you are prepared to lose it! You can move it here later if you wish but not until you have dealt with the threat of black’s dark squared bishop first. There will be some people who disagree with me on this because they think losing a knight to take down a bishop is a fair trade. However, I protect my knights because they are my “Queen Killers” and are often involved in forks later in the end game that my opponents don’t see. If you move the knight to c3 here, the bishop can move to b4 and the knight can’t move because that would put the king in check.
February 18, 2025
ChasteBase: The Queen’s Gambit
This is part of my series of notes on the most common positions I find myself in when playing the Queen’s Gambit. This is my favorite opening when playing the white pieces and I have been studying it for some time. The act of writing things down helps me organize my thoughts and memorize what I have learned.

The format of these notes is as follows:
- Name of Opening/Variation
- Move list in Chess notation
- One or more paragraphs of notes
- Evaluation of good or bad moves from this position
The Queen’s Gambit

1. d4 d5 2. c4

The Queen’s Gambit is one of the most popular openings in the world of Chess. It is what Chastity plays almost all the time. The idea is very simple. White sacrifices a pawn on c4 to buy time to get the bishop and knight out. This small sacrifice can lead to an advantage for white if black falls for the trap. If black takes the c4 pawn, white will then have several options for killing the black pawn and/or ignoring it to develop other pieces. But right now, it is black’s turn and they must decided whether to accept or decline the Queen’s Gambit.

! Good moves for Black
- e6 Defend the d5 pawn by moving the king’s pawn to e6. If white decides to capture the d5 pawn black will capture back and then white will still not be able to move their bishop to c4. Playing e6 is called the “Queen’s Gambit Declined”
- c6 Although it is less common, c6, known as the “Slav Defense” is another way to decline the gambit. By playing this move, black is hinting at a possible check against the white king by moving the black queen to a5. In any case, this move has the same idea that black will capture back on d5 if white’s c4 pawn takes it.
? Bad moves for Black
- dxc4 If black takes this pawn, they can fall into one of many possible traps. It is nearly impossible to prevent white from taking back this pawn with the bishop after moving the e pawn. Also, white now has the option to safely move the e pawn to e4 without it being captured because black no longer has the pawn on d5. If black has played dxc4 here, then they are now in a “Queen’s Gambit Accepted” position. White has the advantage of controlling the center with both their king and queen pawns. Black can still win of course but it will be much harder from here.
February 18, 2025