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My name is Mark, I am 29 years old, and I am living 15 minutes from Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and around 20 minutes from Wijk aan Zee (where the Corus Chess tournament is played every year). Chess is a wonderful game i learned to play when I was 7 years old. My father teached me the basics moves of chess and bought me my first chessboard. From then on I played it when i had time.

 It is one of the few honest and purest games to see and play. In most games, for example when you watch a soccer match, sometimes the team with the lowest budget wins a game from a favorite. But most of the time the clubs with the biggest budgets (like Chelsea, Manchester United, AC Milan, Barcelona, Real Madrid, etc.) are winning, because they can buy the best players. In the Formula one Ferrari has the most money and can build the best cars wit McClaren on there tail. But the other teams don't have a chance to become the champion, because they can't buy the best engine. In chess, when to players play against each other, both players will play one time with white and one time with black, and play both with the same pieces, and the only thing they need is concentration and their minds:) So when a players wins a chessgame, he or she really deserves to win it. You need to make a lot of good moves to win a chessgame. One bad move and the game is over. I think chess is the only game I can enjoy when I lost a game, because of the beaty of the tactics my opponents used. I mean, You are trying to win the game, and right in front of your nose you opponent defeats you with a few beatifull moves without you noticing it. I think there is only one better thing and that is when yourself are winning the game in that way:)

Also every chessgame is different. I mean, there a lot of standard openings, tricks and strategies, but never a chessgame is exactly the same. In a chessgame you can see a character of every person. Nobody is in the same mood to play chess every day. So one day you are very happy or the next day very sad, the other day very agressive and a next day very calm, tired or wellrested. The moods can be seen at the chessboard. And that is what makes it exciting.

I think when you haven't learned chess when you were young, it is a bit difficult in the beginning to understand the beauty of chess and how much fun it is. Once you played around 25 games you past a certain line and you can't do without it anymore:) You can stop with chess for a while (for multiple reasons: work, holiday, personal problems, school), but after a certain time you want to play again and see how you are still playing and try to play exciting games!

Around two years ago, I wanted to play chess more often, but there weren't any of my friends that could play chess well enough against me to play exciting games. I didn't had and still have the time to play at a chessclub, because of my work. I started searching the internet for some exciting chess websites. I compared them all, but Chesshere is the best website I found on the internet. And that was almost two years ago! In the mean time, Chesshere is improving their website every day and you can imagine that the gap with the competing chesswebsites is growing larger and larger. Now Chesshere, to me, is a website at itself and there is really no other chesswebsite that can match the features and options at this website. I mean, you can play up to a 100 games for free and participate for free in chesstournaments! You can even start your own chesstournaments and invite the players you like to play against in your tournament. Isn't that great! And you can always play exciting chess, because people from all over the world, from all different countries (read timezones) are members of this website. So there is always multiple opponents to play against:) There is also a very big choice between the level of players you like to play against. For every player there is a opponent with a matchingchesslevel, so an exciting game of chess can be played! For myself, I like to play against players with high ratings, because in that way I try to improve my chesslevel. I already met a lot of pepole at this website and with a few of them, I am having also contact outside chess. We even send each other souvenirs:) I also recommended this website to a few collegues of me, and they all really like to play at this website. One even belongs to the best players at this website!

Well that is what chess means to me and what Chesshere means to me. If anybody Likes to play a game of chess against me, just send me a message;)

 Greetings,

Mark (Orangechess)