Yeah, I've gotten more serious about my over-the-board chess play this year; after abstaining for many years. When i was a "young-buck" chess play decades ago, there were but a few good books and no huge Internet databases and ECO classifications of chess openings and variations. But when I started to recently get back into chess for the fun of a glass of wine with a friend and over-the-board play on a super nice chess board with 60mm squares, I could not help but notice how the world of chess has become so much more interesting with all the on-line databases and all the different approaches to analysis.

As a child, I think learning chess at 5 really helped contribute to a part of my young mental-development and now as an aging guy, I'm finding exploring chess again contributes again, to keeping the mind sharp and not to mention have a beer or glass of wine with a dear friend and playing a "real world" game versus a chess engine is really a nice way to spend the evening!

At chessgames.com for example I can explore an opening that I played over-the-board with a friend as part of the post-analysis of that game, and then when I get to a certain point, I download the PGN file and load it into a chess engine and continue playing a few variations against the computer long after my friend has good home and is off to work the next day.

Or, I can go to the same site and, as a member, search for all Bobby Fischers Najdorf games (in their DB) and download all and load them into my favorite chess engine if I'm in to the mood for "nerd play"..... versus playing with a friend over-the-board.

.. well, I'm interested in what other chess players here think and what they are doing, so that's why i posted this thread; not to bore you with what I'm doing in the chess world these days!