Since 2001, I've play skittles chess (5 minutes + 3 seconds) on pogo.com. I always make my own table, and sit down as Black (so my opponent starts with White). My username starts with "Gilmoy", and the remaining 10 letters is whatever inane or topical joke strikes my fancy. I play from newbie (1500) to red dot (2001+), then retire the account and make a new one; I have over 70 (most of which have long since expired). My best performance was 71-4; my worst take well over 400 games. Pogo e-mails you a PGN of your game on conclusion (if you ask; I always do), so I have them all archived.I have no offical rating -- I've never played in a tournament (nor even seen one in person). My schedule never permitted it, and I suspect I lack the patience for tourney time controls.
I learned the moves almost 30 years ago, from books. My favorite was Cozen's "The Kinghunt in Chess", which I haven't seen since. I was hooked on the beauty of chess -- I knew Immortal, Evergreen, Rubinstein's, Fischer's GotC, etc. I didn't know how to actually *play*, though.
I played with friends in middle school, and had no clue. Later, I briefly (like, twice each :) attended the chess clubs at Caltech, U.Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), and U.Wisconsin-Milwaukee, but they both preferred flat 5 minutes, and I can't think that fast -- I need the 3 seconds.
In late 2006, I started solving chessgames.com's Puzzle of the Day. After a few months of that, my play on pogo has gotten somewhat more vicious, and much more fun. I look for piece sacs that I never would have considered before. My opponents have declined about 80% of them -- even the unsound ones ^_^
I prefer Ruy/Spanish as White or Black. As Black, I trust my QGD against 1.d4, but I dabble in KID, QID, or Nimzo-Indian -- usually whichever one I saw most recently on chessgames.com at super-GM level :) I used to lose to King's Gambit more than any other opening by White, until I got mad, Googled it, printed out the first 3 hits, and did some homework. Since then, my KGA is about +350=10-20 as Black.
I like watching soccer and volleyball. I prefer informative TV like Discovery, History, A&E, piano/violin concertos, Broadway musicals, animals of all kinds, and YouTube videos thereof. I found a male praying mantis (~3 cm long) in my dorm hallway once, brought it to my lab in a Tupperware, and took it hunting for mosquitoes every few hours for a week. Mantid poop looks like compressed mosquito shell fragments.
Kibitzing
