The Chess Campaign - Ground Zero

[Part of the Chess Campaign]

For those wondering why I'm even doing this, my cousin's son Josh is really into chess and is pretty good as is his grandpa Rick. While I know how the pieces move I have zero in context of planning or anything and historically have lost to pretty much everyone I play, unless they let me win, have a brain-fart, or are less patient than I am. I'm particularly scarred by playing against DL who enjoys ignoring my king and slaying every other piece on the board first before going for a checkmate (no surrendering allowed).

Anyway, thanks to Josh and Rick I learned a few things (because they decided to teach a little instead of just kicking my butt)!

1 - Don't bring out the queen early. I love bringing out my queen early! She also dies early, like after killing one pawn. LOL.
2 - "Develop" the bishops and knights - get them off the back line. I move pawns too much.
3 - Control the center of the board. That's a thing?
4 - En passant. I had a true WTF moment when Josh used this against me. If your pawn takes two steps (first move) and ends up BESIDE an enemy pawn it can immediately be eaten as if it was diagonally in front of it. I had to look up this term as I kept remembering it as "Ovaltine". :P

Armed with this new intel I decided to try play against some online chess AI on chess.com, and by default went against "Larry Fitzgerald Jr. (1250)". I didn't realize that number is their skill level, and got immediately thrashed as his queen broke through my front lines and went on a massacre. I lost in around 10 moves!

It's like this scene from Kill Bill, and my pieces were the ones wearing black!

Ok, time to look for the lowest ranked AI there... Martin (250).