101 in 1001 - Re-learn How To Play Chess

Over the past few months I've spent some time working towards the 101 in 1001 goal:

• 053. Re-learn how to play chess

Setting up the board

I used to play chess in as part of a chess club when I was a kid, but haven't played in years and have largely forgotten much of what I learnt. That was the motivation behind this goal. After talking with my friend Rina about chess one evening, I realised that I did still remember how to set up the pieces, their basic moves and the basic rules of chess. So I then watched the tutorial below (which I found as one of the suggested videos of a link Rina sent me) to give me an extra refresher. It helped a lot, especially with things like the en passant rule because I didn't remember that at all!

After that, I used the website lichess.org to practise and my friend Luciel and I played some games against each other via that site too. I lost every time, because Luciel is much better at chess and things involving strategy than I am, but they were helping me to learn, so it was fun!

A few weeks later, Luciel and I then played a game using a chess set; I was white and they were black. I tried my best and they helped me a lot, but it inevitably ended up with me in this situation:

Just the king left, preparing for checkmate

Honestly, Luciel could have won much sooner than this, but chose not to so that we could keep playing. So, I am still really rubbish at chess, but I do remember how to play it, which was my goal. It's complete! I will probably keep practising though, because I'd really like to improve.