I love chess. I am a member of my school's chess club, where I am about mid-way in the group in terms of skill. For a certain young age group my school is second in the country, so I'm often beaten by kids 6 years younger than me, but for most of them I'm a fair match. I beat most people who don't play regularly, because regular play means as much as overall skill in my experience. I play it on the internet and on my phone. I own about 12 chess books - one of them was printed in about 1896, loads from the 1930s and some more recent. For my 16th birthday a load of friends came round and we had a chess tournament. Although I usually pay attention in school, during a particularly boring English lesson recently I played a friend at chess on his iPod.

It's not like I'm brilliant at it or anything, and it's not even a primary obsession (I spend much more time reading and thinking about programming and games than I do chess) but somehow I love it - I'm compelled by it, I sit up until far too late just playing people on a certain chess website, the same as I do with TF2 and other games. I posed the question of the source of this to a friend over xfire:

[22:42] ♠ace•up•my•sleeve♠حس6; صب♠: Why do I love chess so much?
[22:42] Charming: you're an inter lick dual?

So clearly no use asking him (who I actually beat at chess only a few hours ago).

Anyone else know where I'm coming from with this chess thing?

I don't know why I'm doing this blog post. Every day I get an idea of something to post a blog about and never get round to it, this is one of my worse ideas. Sorry.