Chastity's Chess Challenge

Tag: writing

  • 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/

  • 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.

  • Chess Romance Story Premise

    Chuck, a lonely autistic man in a small town, loves to play Chess online but wants to play Chess over the board like he has seen in only online videos. However, no one else in his town knows how to play Chess. He decides that he will have to teach people this game. He disappointingly finds out that no one is interested in learning Chess. He decides to hire a random woman, Laura, on a dating app to pretend to be his Chess student and play with him at the park so that people can witness.

    At first, the woman is in it only for the money and doesn’t care about Chess. After a few days of playing, she sees why he loves the game. However, the children at the park have noticed the board game they are playing and ask to be taught. Chuck goes to the park with Laura once a week and teaches the rules of Chess to anyone who shows up.

    Laura sees how the children love Chuck as he teaches them the game. She thinks about how he would be a good father because of how he is with children. Over time, Laura begins to develop romantic feelings for Chuck, but he is only interested in Chess. When she says she wants to date him romantically, he declines and tells her that it was entirely a business relationship and that her services are no longer needed.

    Chuck continues going to the park by himself and teaches the children Chess. However, when a concerned parent reports to the police about a suspicious man who spends time with the children at the park, he is arrested. He is registered as a sex offender and branded as a pedophile by most people in the town even though he never did anything wrong, and there is no evidence to convict him. He loses his home, job, and everything that matters to him.

    When Laura finds out what has happened to Chuck, she goes to the police and tells them that they have made a mistake and arrested an innocent man for nothing. When she is questioned about how she knows him, she explains that Chuck is her Chess Coach and that he never caused harm to her or any children.

    Chuck is released from jail and thanks Laura for her honesty and for saving his reputation. When she asks him why he would not date her, Chuck explains that he is gay and doesn’t date women but that he fears homophobia if he spends time with a man in public. Laura explains that this experience shows that people will accuse people of doing something wrong, no matter what they do. She encourages Chuck not to let other people keep him from living the life he wants.

    Chuck and Laura get to know each other and eventually get married, despite only caring for each other emotionally and playing Chess together. They open a Chess school together and everyone understands both that Chess is a great game, and that Chuck is a good guy. People realize they were wrong to make false accusations against him.

  • Chastity’s Chess Challenge: Manifesto of Chess Equality

    My name is Chastity White Rose. That is not my legal name but it is the name I chose for myself to describe who I am. I will expand on this later. The purpose of this blog post is to explain in full detail what my Chess teaching business is and what the goals are. I will be known as the Chess Coach for the LGBTQIA community as well as those with ADHD, autism, or any other disability.

    The reason for this is that most of the great Chess masters who are capable of teaching very well, including my favorite, Levy Rozman, are much too busy and don’t have the patience or experience I do at understanding people with differences often misunderstood by the public.

    But I am autistic and transgender. I understand the LGBTQIA community extremely well. I also know that autistic people have unique talents that can be brought out with the right teacher. Some of us are really good at math. Others are good with words but can’t do math at all! Some of us can’t talk, while others never shut up! However, I believe that there is something about the game of Chess that is specifically good for autistic people because it allows us to use our minds in a way that is void of expectations of human society.

    Different people are like different Chess pieces that move in different ways. The loss of even a few pieces can cause a player to lose the game in the end. Therefore, Chastity’s Chess Challenge is about teaching Chess to those people who may otherwise never learn. We live in a time where people have all heard of Chess and yet so few people play it because a lot of money is spent on promoting the latest video game or movie to children. While I am a supporter of movies, video games, books, and all forms of entertainment for children and adults, I also believe that we forget the days when people played simple board and card games with friends back when we didn’t have television, computers, or even electricity!

    When I was in my twenties, I played Chess with older adults at the Gamber Center in Lees Summit. That’s when I learned that despite the differences in age and life experience, we were all complete equals in the game of Chess. We were equals because any of us could win. Chess isn’t a game where some people are always going to be superior. All that really matters is the time and dedication to improving. But more important than that is the fact that Chess is fun because you never know what will happen.

    I would also like to explain why I use the Progress Flag as part of my logo. The idea is that the Progress Flag represents people of all kinds, including those who are gay, transgender, and of different skin colors. Some people wildly misinterpret the image as me saying that Chess has something to do with being gay. The point is that people who are gay or transgender do not need to be afraid of me because I am one of them. I never want someone to be afraid of Chess just because they see only famous players who are cisgender straight white males. The world is tired of only one demographic of people getting the spotlight in Chess.

    Chess is a way of fighting back against a world that judges by appearance and financial status. In the game of Chess, the poor can win against a billionaire, the women can win against the men, and gender identity, sexual orientation, and skin color will not cause you to win or lose. In this way, I find that Chess is perfect because no personality is assigned to the chess pieces themselves. It is a game played by humans using shaped pieces that don’t resemble humans.

    What I do for my teaching business is that I record videos and I write about Chess in the hope of inspiring people to get into this game they have heard of but never had someone to teach them! I also can set up one-on-one sessions either online or locally to anywhere in Lees Summit that I can walk to! That is what Chastity’s Chess Challenge is about. I only have so much time to dedicate to it now, but when I graduate from college, I expect to be much more active!

  • Chessbase 17 Steam Review

    I am a Chess player who likes to know everything I can about Chess. I mostly use free and Open-Source software to manage my Chess databases. However, because Chessbase is very popular among professional players, I wanted to try it out.

    At first, I found this program confusing and wondered what I could use it for. What I found is that I could easily import any PGN database I already had. I had Caissabase and some other sources. Chessbase makes it easy to navigate imported databases and play through them. However, that really wasn’t something I couldn’t already do with Chessx or HIARCS.

    But what I discovered is that part of the experience of Chessbase comes from the fact that databases, opening books, and courses can all be purchased separately from the Chessbase store. Basically, Chessbase is a store platform for Chess in the same way Steam is a store for video games. Does this justify the high cost of the Chessbase application? In my opinion, it does not. However, there may be features that I don’t understand yet because I am very new to using Chessbase. I will learn more and then perhaps update my review.

    But regardless, Chessbase is very popular among the top Chess players and so it was worth my time to learn about this application so that I understand why it is helpful. I don’t regret my purchase of Chessbase 17, but I can’t help but wonder why the price is so high when free open-source applications like ChessX and En-Croissant have many of the same features.

    If you want to purchase Chessbase, I suggest that you already have a database of games from another source. It could be quite useful for managing the databases you already have of your games from Lichess. I would also recommend using En-Croissant to download the free databases available, like Caissabase, and then exporting them to PGN format to be imported into Chessbase.

  • Annotating a chess game from 2023

    The following is a game from December 14 2023 that I played on lichess.

    It was one of the first games I played shortly after I joined the site.

    [Event “Rated correspondence game”]
    [Site “https://lichess.org/hdH5wwaK”%5D
    [Date “2023.12.14”]
    [Round “?”]
    [White “chastitywhiterose”]
    [Black “FeevomSee”]
    [Result “1-0”]
    [BlackElo “1469”]
    [BlackRatingDiff “-12”]
    [ECO “C57”]
    [Termination “Normal”]
    [UTCDate “2023.12.14”]
    [UTCTime “06:06:10”]
    [Variant “Standard”]
    [WhiteElo “1500”]
    [WhiteRatingDiff “+34”]

    1.e4 $1
    { King’s pawn two spaces is the traditional and most common way for white
    to start the game because it allows white’s queen and bishop to both move
    out diagonally. } 1…e5
    { Black usually replies to e4 by moving their king’s pawn two squares as
    well with the same idea of getting a queen and bishop out early } 2.Nf3 $1
    { Moving the knight to f3 is a very common move for those who want a quick
    attack on the weak f7 square in combination with a bishop on c4 or perhaps
    a queen on h5 or f3 after the knight has jumped to e5 or g5 } 2…Nc6 $1
    { Black’s knight jumps to c6 to prevent white’s knight from capturing on e5
    } 3.Bc4 $1
    { The bishop moves to c4 for the purpose of attacking the f7 square. This
    could lead to a checkmate if black isn’t careful } 3…Nf6
    { The knight moves to f6 and targets the e4 pawn. } 4.Ng5
    { The knight jumps to g5 with the hope of a fork between the queen and
    rook. This works only because it would be protected by the c4 bishop. }
    4…d5
    { White’s plans are ruined by a black pawn which blocks the path to f7.
    White’s bishop can’t capture the pawn because it is protected by the queen
    and knight. } 5.exd5 $1
    { White used the e4 pawn (which would have been captured anyway) to capture
    the d5 pawn. This is a even trade and arguably is the best move. } 5…Nxd5
    { The black knight captures the white pawn. White’s g5 knight is now in
    danger. } 6.d3
    { Moving the pawn to d3 allows the bishop to protect the g5 knight. Now the
    queen can’t safely capture it. } 6…g6
    { It appears that by moving the pawn to g6, black may be planning an attack
    on the g5 knight with the dark squared bishop. However, it also prevents
    the white queen from going to h5 for an attempt at checkmate. } 7.Nc3
    { White offers to trade knights to get the d5 black knight out of the way.
    } 7…Nxc3
    { Black knight captures the white knight because it had nothing better to
    do at the time. } 8.bxc3 $5
    { The white pawn captures the black knight. This is not a bad move but at
    the time, Chastity failed to see that she could have captured the f7 pawn
    with the bishop and put the king in check before capturing back the knight. This would have been better because the game would have taken a much
    better turn. } 8…Be6
    { The black bishop blocks the white bishop from accessing the f7 square. }
    9.Bxe6 fxe6 10.Nxe6 Qe7 11.Qg4 Nd8 12.Nxd8 Rxd8 13.Bg5 Qd6 14.Bxd8 Qxd8
    15.O-O Bd6 16.Qe6+ Be7 17.Qxe5 Rf8 18.Rfe1 Rf5 19.Qh8+ Rf8 20.Qxh7 1-0

    I was streaming on Twitch at the time I started learning to annotate a game with HIARCS. If you watch the video you will see how easy it is to add comments on chess games with either HIARCS or ChessX. It would also be easy to annotate using just a text editor but perhaps I might have made mistakes, and I didn’t want to take that risk.

  • Should you buy a Chess program to study?

    Analysis of different Chess GUIs available

    One of the great things about Chess is that you can play for free either online or over the board if you have a local friend willing to play.

    Most of the time, a person doesn’t need to spend any money at all on the game of Chess. However, I am not a normal person but someone who wants to know everything about Chess.

    The official website for stockfish (the world’s strongest Chess engine) has a convenient list of the best Graphical User Interfaces and how to install and use them along with the stockfish engine.

    But if you are a new Chess player or you are looking for serious advice on how to improve at the game, I have a serious warning.

    Computers don’t play Chess like humans do. They look ahead and make a move that may make a different 50 moves later. Therefore, playing against the computer or even using a computer to analyze a game can mislead you into thinking a move is bad when it may actually help you win, or maybe it will tell you a move is good but not have the means to tell you why in the same way a human can.

    Therefore, when analyzing which GUI you want to use, I will be talking about which of them helps you better analyze your own games with human reasoning. I will present 4 options. 2 of which are free and 2 of which are programs you can buy.

    Free programs

    What I find myself using the most lately is a free and open source program called En-Croissant. It lets you automatically download a database of the rated games you have played on either chess.com or lichess.

    Frank Willow, the creator of the program published a blog post on lichess.org about it.

    Another great program is liground. It allows using the computer to analyze not only Chess but also variants like Crazyhouse, Shogi, Xiangqi, and many others. If you only play standard Chess you probably won’t make use of it but if you are someone like me who loves all games that are similar to Chess, you may find it helpful just as I have.

    Paid

    The stockfish site I linked to earlier recommends 3 different programs you can buy: Chessbase, Shedder, and Hiarcs. Of these options, only Shredder and Hiarcs are that good.

    Shredder is mostly for playing against the computer. It can keep track of your games and even assign you a rating that goes up or down depending on how you win or lose. However, it’s not that special beyond this. Perhaps if you are looking for a nice program to play against customized strength stockfish and want to download something because you don’t have a reliable internet connection, it’s pretty good. The interface looks really nice and it does let you import and export PNG files of individual games.

    Hiarcs is the better option for me because I don’t use it to play against the computer. I prefer to use it by downloading my own databases of games from lichess and stepping through them. The same can be done with En-Croissant, but the fact that you can open different PGN files and have them in different tabs is a huge bonus. Another thing that is a selling point for me is that it allows me to type in the hex codes for exactly what color squares I want the light and dark squares of the chessboard to be. This is important for someone like me who cares about the appearance of the chessboard for streaming and recording videos.

    I will mention that there is a program called Chessx which is similar to Hiarcs that is free and open source, but the user interface leaves much to be desired. I think you might want to start with it and then if you like it, you might want to buy Hiarcs because it just looks way nicer and does not have trouble loading larger database files.

    Conclusion

    These are my current recommendations for programs serious Chess players might want to use if they have a PC. The open-source free options also work on Linux too if that is important for you.

    Both Shredder and Hiarcs also have mobile app versions too, but I find them to be not as great as the desktop PC version.

  • Chess: The First Move

    White always plays the first move in the game of Chess. There are a total of 20 possible moves that they can do for their first turn. The possible number of Chess games that can occur is greater than any human can calculate especially since games can go on for theoretically hundreds of moves.

    But the first move sets the stage for the rest of the game. Of these moves, some of them are more popular than others. Some of them may objectively be good or bad. The purpose of this post is to go through all 20 possible moves and comment on each of them.

    I will start with the most popular move and then work my way down according to how infrequent they are. The order of popularity is according to the masters database accessible from the lichess analysis board.

    1. e4 · King’s Pawn Opening

    Pawn to e4 or King’s Pawn opening is the most popular move in any database I have seen. I believe this to be because it immediately opens the diagonal paths from white’s queen and light squared bishop to move. Most players start with this and most of the openings begin with it. Because of this, there are many quick checkmate traps that result from it, most notably, the scholar’s mate.

    1. d4 · Queen’s Pawn Opening

    Moving the Queen’s pawn two squares instead of the King’s pawn is the preferred opening of Chastity White Rose. This approach to starting the game makes the statement that she doesn’t want a quick game but rather to set up a defensive position and slowly wipe out the enemy army. This is the “safe” way to play rather than the quick thrill of checkmates in less than ten moves that begin with the King’s pawn.

    Openings that begin with d5 such as the Queen’s Gambit, London System, and Trompowsky Attack are very easy for beginners to learn. Also, the most popular responses by black are either d5 or Nf6. This is because while black would like to play e5, the d4 pawn would just capture it with no consequence.

    1. Nf3 · Zukertort Opening

    Moving the knight to f3 is the third most popular option. This is unusual because most people prefer to move a pawn and get the bishops out. By playing this move, it signals that white will probably want the knight to be on this square for plans later. The primary benefits of this is that white can see what black’s first move is before forming their plans. White still has the option to move a pawn to d4 or e4 on their second move but can wait and see what black does first.

    One benefit is that black cannot move a pawn to e5 without just losing that pawn immediately. White also can transpose into the london system which includes a knight on the f3 square. Of the knight moves that a player can start with, this is probaby the best.

    1. c4 · English Opening

    Pawn to c4 is useful for allowing white to move their queen diagonally but without creating any weaknesses in the pawn structure. The pawn acts as a bait for black to attack but any piece that does capture it can be attacked with the bishop as soon as white moves their king’s pawn to either e3 or e4. This can easily transpose to the queen’s gambit if players decide to go that route.

    1. g3 · Hungarian Opening

    Pawn to g3 allows white to get their bishop moved out to g2 which brings white one step closer to castling kingside. It also allows the bishop to help capture a pawn on d5 if the game later turns into a variation of the Queen’s Gambit or London System.

    1. b3 · Larsen Attack

    b3 is almost exactly like g3 except on the other side of the board. Both of these moves allow players to get bishops on squares that are in line with the enemy rooks. This could lead to a loss of black’s rooks later in the game after they have forgotten where white placed their bishop.

    To be continued

    So far, only the first 6 of the 20 possible moves have been mentioned. These lead to the most possibilities but I will cover the others as I find more time.

    Also, I have plans to include annotation symbols and a percentage chart from my own lichess games to give an idea how many games I have played with them and by extension, how much experience I have with them.

    This post last updated January 5, 2025

  • Hello Chess World

    This is the first post on my brand new website dedicated specifically to teaching Chess.

    You may remember me from my main website:
    https://chastitywhiterose.com/

    I have written about many topics over the years, but since 2023, my site has become flooded with Chess related posts because my new business, Chastity’s Chess Challenge, is what I will be writing about the most from now on.

    By creating this site specifically about Chess, people who only want to see Chess content but don’t want to know about other things will feel more comfortable. I had this idea because I use Chess as a way to escape from the complicated world of politics and religion that stresses me out because other people attack me with their views, even when I am working at Walmart.

    I will be writing posts on this blog that may eventually become content for a book I will publish. I hope people find these posts helpful.

    But the most important thing I want you to know is that I will fight to the death to prove that Chess is for all people. I believe this and I show it by the lyrics for songs that I write.

    I use AI to sing and make music using the lyrics I write. Although AI is controversial to many people, among professional Chess players, they recognize that AI, notably stockfish, has changed the game forever. Because Chess engines can find the best move, they can evaluate Chess games automatically and tell where the mistakes are.

    And if AI can play Chess, why not also use it to make music about Chess? That’s what I do.

    So, stay tuned to this site because there will be Chess tips, videos, and music!