Chess, Chess and more Chess.

I have been playing chess regularly for over 15 years. I prefer over the board chess but it's much easier to get a game online these days.

As for personal preferences, I like to start out with 1. e4 when playing white. When playing with black I usually respond to 1.e4 with 1...c5 the Sicilian leaning towards the Najdorf as my favorite defense. When my opponent as white plays 1. d4 I like the King's Indian and Semi-Slav the best.

I love solving tactical puzzles (I often keep a chess puzzle book as my bedside book) because I truly believe pattern recognition can improve your chess game significantly. I also like to study the games of select grandmasters because this has undoubtedly proven to help strengthen my game. My favorites are "The magician from Riga" Mikhail Tal, the great Bobby Fischer and the endgame virtuoso Akiba Rubinstein. Of course there are many others that are worthy of study but those have always been the players I admired the most.

BTW - I claim timeouts unless otherwise agreed upon.