All tagged Chess.com

Does it Track my Every Move? Reviewing Kickstarter-backed Connected Chess Board Chessnut Air

Life-Sparring is not a Chess website; it is a self-improvement project disguised as a blog and a podcast. However, I shared my love-hate relationship with Chess not so long ago in a blog post called "My Personal Queen’s Gambit," and Chess is for me not just a game but also a way to assess and challenge my mental capabilities.

If you follow Life-Sparring, you also know that I am a sucker for connected (smart) devices and have been multiple times dubbed into backing promising devices on Kickstarter with very mixed reviews.

My most recent Kickstarter acquisition was the Chessnut Air, a smart Chessboard connecting via Bluetooth to an iOS or Android device, and from to the two biggest online chess providers, Chess.com and Lichess.

After receiving my Chesssnut, I did a well-received spontaneous "dirty" unboxing video. The views and reactions encouraged me to follow up with a more thorough review. I try my best to cover as much ground as possible and answer any questions posed as a reaction to the unboxing video. Enjoy!

My Personal Queen's Gambit - How I Fell In and Out of Love with Chess and Needed 20 Years to Come Back

One of the surprise TV hits of Fall 2020 was Netflix’s miniseries series The Queen’s Gambit.

The show was (like most things on Netflix) well-produced and got a lot of things right about the “Game of Kings.” And it achieved something almost impossible; it made Chess look cool. I binge-watched the show, and it brought back a lot of memories of my own chess-playing youth.