Real Board

Hello Everyone,

I really want to play more with a real board, mostly because I want reduce my screen time. Esp during these covid times. However I life alone and the people I do see from time to time do either not play chess or are far below my (900~1000) level (mostly the, oh yea chess I played that once 30 years ago group). The only thing I think is valuable to do on a real board when alone is game analysis? Am I missing something? Or should I maybe consider spending 400 USD on a Square Off/DGT/Millennium chess board? I don't really like playing against the computer so a cheap second hand chess computer is out of the question.


Any advice / Insight would be appreciated.

I use a real board when going through chess books.  Perhaps this could be a very practical way of both reducing screen time and getting some dedicated study time.

I play daily chess and set up a real board for those games. It also helps when analyzing older games, books, etc.

When I have my serious study sessions I use a smaller analysis board and I feel as if I have better retention of the material. 

Back in 2018/2019, I really got tired of computers. I just did not want to deal with them when I was at home. I wanted to continue to learn about chess but did not want to be on a computer all of the time. I decided to buy a physical board and pieces. I continued to play against a chess engine on my iPhone or iPad. I would replicate the computer moves to the board and my moves to the iPad. It takes me forever sometimes to figure out what move to make. During which I don't need to look at a screen. I look at a real board instead. I also use the board to analyze all of my games against the computer. I just print out a list of moves and then go through it. I have a physical paper notebook to write out notes about each move/game. I also have a smaller board I use to analyze various lines. It has worked really well for me thus far. Most of the time I only deal with my two physical chess boards and pieces which requires no power (except for a light bulb), no cables, no screens and no Internet. There are no error messages, beeping, crashes, freezing, etc. The best part of all is my phone is in another room and my computer is asleep. There are zero notifications about calls, texts, emails, and others. It is just me and chess.

Awesome thanks, bought a board.
And a good book, can't wait to play all the lines.