I'm not a great chess player but see my opinions below:

"Christopher" wrote in message
om...
1) Why is it that losing at chess....is supposed to make you a
stronger player in the end? It just seems logical that losing at chess
would make a person feel down, and perhaps not want to play it.
Especially if you don't know why you lost in the first place (e.g.
your opponent was really offensive throughout the whole game, yet it's
not because you made a mistake per se)

It's generally accepted that people learn from a failure better than they
learn from a success. It forces greater retrospection and analysis.

If you lost, you DID make a mistake, or a series of mistakes. I'm sure your
opponent did too, but you lost because he capitalized on those mistakes
better than you did. So, you need to learn to recognize mistakes. After
the game, talk with your opponent if possible, or use a chess program to
help you through your game.


2) How do you train yourself to use a clock? I've never used one
before....but the thing is this, when I rush through my moves (less
than one minute per move) I always make some huge crucial mistake
which makes me lose the game. How exactly do people play speed chess,
where they can make really good moves in such a short period of time?
Do they just practice a lot? (e.g. memorize board positions?)

Most people recognize patterns, for sure, but I'm not sure about positions
(except for openings). Clocks just take time to get used to. The challenge
in shorter time controls is to try to come up with a good move in a short
period of time. Practice, really. Undoubtedly you will make better moves
with more time, but so will your opponent.

3) On these newsgroups and various chess websites, there is talk about
"french defense" and "sicilian defense"....how do you guys first learn
about this? Do you have to read a chess book and memorize these move
combinations.....or can you learn this through natural experience
playing your own chess games?

Openings are fairly static things, such as the sicilian. Software is pretty
good at this (CM or Fritz), you can use an opening book to learn from, etc.
Or search the web. If you're just learning, you should learn a few openings
(like the English, French, Sicilian) but then forget openings and go on to
tactics. You'll find that openings get fairly deep but generally, most of
the moves (if you know the basics of opening theory) are often played by
intuition, even though you may not know it.

-Brian