Chess in prison

Hello I am currently in jail waiting to go to prison to serve out an 11 year term. I began playing chess 2 months after coming to jail and since then I have been playing everyday, obsessing over it. Right now I've been playing for 1 year and 10 months. I am going to have da friend give updates on here for me.

I am 24 years old and started playing chess 2 months before I turned 23. As I started out playing I realized I have an incredible natural talent for the game and in 2 1/2 months I started beating the best player in the jail who was a guy who did 30 years in prison(15 percent win rate but I started winning some at least). Fast forward a year and two months and the best guy is gone and the new best is a guard rated 1900 on chess.com. I had been playing him every time he worked my dorm and had lost almost every game vs him but all of a sudden one day and everything clicked and I beat him 6-1 with his superior officer watching. They had bet on the series and some of the inmates had too and in the end I was given some food as winnings. Now my win rate vs him is about 70 percent and he no longer wants to play me! There is also an inmate in my dorm who is 1550 on chess.com and my best win streak vs him is 16 wins straight.

I hope to become an international master and become an inspiration to all adult improvers. I've been obsessed too with finding players who started late and became masters and I hope to add myself to the short list. Mihai suba, chigorin, Kenneth smith, Howard Staunton, Alexander McDonnell, and Ariel marichal are all players who started at or after the age of 19 and accomplished great things in the chess world.

Playing chess behind bars is very fun people talk shit a lot and there are a lot of funny and talented chess players in jail. There has never been a fight over chess or anything like that. This is my first time ever getting in trouble too and if you are curious what my charges are Im in for attempted robbery and aggravated assault. I regret what I did and am truly remorseful for it.

are you allowed to use cell phone or computer in prison?

How chess in prison?

nice keep it up

No phone or computer allowed in prison but people do smuggle phones in but I'll never use one as I don't want to risk getting caught and losing my gain time. I do have a prison tablet that I use to send "jail mail" to the outside world, costs 50 cents per message. Prison is actually a business.

Chess in prison is all I've known as I started playing in prison/jail but I heard it's like playing at a local park. There are tables in my dorm and we have one chess set. We have about 50 people in our dorm and there are three guys in here other than me who are around 1550 to 1700 chess.com(I base this off that the guy who said he's 1550 on chess.com loses regularly to the other two). There hasn't been any tournaments yet but I'm still in jail which is way different and way more restricted than prison. I can only play people in my own dorm in jail while in prison I'll be able to play anyone on the whole compound! From what I heard there are quite a bit of chess tournaments in prison. The correctional officers play us whenever they get the chance.

check out the Golden Knights correspondence chess tournament. I believe that it is open to incarcerated players with a legal address.

I believe that USCF membership is required. there is also an option for playing by email if it is available to you through computers in the prison library.

giving chess lessons could be a good hustle for you inside. just like cutting hair, cleaning cells, doing artwork, or doing legal work for other inmates. good luck👍

Be careful not to blunder by dropping the soap in the shower in case you reveal your opening, you might be pinned by an inmate launching a discovered attack before delivering a brutal forced checkmate with his bad bishop in a cramped position, with the rest of the rank and file desperate for some activity, ready and waiting to fork you . Don't stand in the corner putting yourself in Zugzwang, create space and let them know from the first move you've no interest in exchanges or counter attacking. Alternatively, sacrifice cleanliness for safety and keep your most valuable piece away from harm by staying in your dorm all times, which for me would be a standard book move in such a setting, in fact I'd say that's a brilliant move, see you in 2035.

This is a game from September vs the guy who's 1550 on chess.com its my only game I've recorded but I'll record more if people want them. I'm a big fan of the romantic era of chess and love to play the danish gambit, kings gambit, smith morra gambit as white and as black I like the philidor countergambit and idk if there is a name to this opening but after 1.e4 e5 2. Bc4 I do 2...b5 doing a reverse Evans gambit I suppose? I have yet to play Evans gambit once as white which is very disappointing.

1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Bc4 Qf6 4. Nf3 d6 5. 0-0 h6 6. d4 g4 7.e5 dxe5 8. Nxe5 Be6 9. Re1 Be7 10. Bxe6 exe6 11. Qh5+ Kd8 12. Nf7+ Kc8 13. Nxh8 Qxd4+ 14. Kh1 Qxh8 15. Qe8+ Bd8 16. Rd1 Nc6 17. Qxe6+ Kb8 18. Nc3 Nge7 19. Nd5 Qe5 20.Qxe5 Nxe5 21. Nxe7 Bxe7 22. b3 b6 23. Bb2 Bd6 24. Bxe5 Bxe5 25. Rd8+ Kb7 26. Rxa8 Kxa8

I'm going to check out the golden knights tournament when I get there. I've asked around and people said they are unsure if they have computers with email access in prison.

I'm also writing a more detailed book about my experiences playing chess while locked up. When I get to prison I'm going to try and create a chess club and get a USCF membership. I live in Florida so if anyone wants to visit me and play chess we can do that. I've heard of grandmasters doing simuls in prisons so I'm going to try and get that done too.

So far even jail(which is suppose to be way worse than prison) isn't so bad but then again I might be on the spectrum and I have no wife and kids nor mortgage/loans to take care of. Honestly I needed to go to jail with how my life was. I lost 75 lbs in jail, have no urge to ever drink again, and for once in my life I have friends to engage in activities with.

While in jail I've read lots of scientific studies done on chess players and there are a few interesting ones I might share my thoughts on. Most notably: the relation between ELO and how many ply ahead one sees, how an opening can effect your ELO by 200 points, and what cognitive subtests predict chess performance the most.

One of the best books i've read about chess is . . .

If you want to play more chess you might start playing weaker players by playing them BLINDFOLD . . . eventually you will play a whole game with no problem . . .

Or when you play someone that is weaker by removing the A1 Rook as a handicap.

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I would not count too much on an IM title if I was you (or me, lol). The capacity to become 2400 and above is probably more linked to some partial brain malfunction similar to autism than to pure talent, genius or intelligence. Now, that being said, okay maybe not the same for every one of us all. Yet, the odds are slim you'll ever be an IM or even just an FM any day in the future. It takes more than just being good at chess, somehow. My opinion.

Still, to achieve a lasting rating between 2000-2200 is already great an achievement. That is the top of amateur level. Just saying. And to get rated 1800-1900 is already to be in the upper half of trained and experienced club chess players when the average club players peaks around 1600-1800 in their whole life and chess career.

Last but not least, know that some of us have been there where you are, and that more than one would suspect do care about you guys. Only, it's sure not easy to keep thinking about what we don't see daily. Jail business is a concern, and so are many other items of jail life. To be guilty of a crime is just not everything there is about a person, just saying.

Can't play blindfold games because no one knows the algebraic notation and are too lazy to learn it. Might start playing the best guys with a handicap but I don't want to come off as disrespectful. Will think on this.

I've analyzed over 100 master level rated players progression charts and what I've found is that you can predict someones approximate future rating by how long they've been playing chess and how fast they've progressed. What I do is use how fast they got to 1800. 1800 appears to be the halfway point time wise to master level. So if someone reaches 1800 in 2 years they'll be about 2050-2250 at 4 years and if someone reaches 1800 in 5 years they'll be about 2050-2250 at 10 years. This theory holds true for practically every master level player I analyzed with only a few not reaching my predicted rating and that's probably because they took a break from the game. Age doesn't seem to matter either(to the theory of predicting ones future elo) as I found that masters who started at 13-14 followed this rule the same as 7 year old starting masters.

You guys don't play naval battle as kids in the US ? If you played naval battle as a kid, you know algeabric notation. This is what I tell to them who try to go "oh noe iz complikated foe me", and it works just every time.

Same, it goes like "a1 b3 g4" and "submarine hit" etc. You know that, you know algebraic notation.

We played it with pen and paper.

So if you are in jail right now how are you posting any of this here??

I played in a chess league after I got married one of our stops was San Quentin prison.

I wrote a memoir chess piece on chess,com , , , here is the link. . .

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/fun-with-chess/my-time-at-san-quentin-prison-in-california-6352375

In jail we have tablets which I can message my dad with.

I'll try explaining to them its like battleship.

Does anyone have any chess opening books that are in algebraic notation with the letters instead of the piece symbols and with no diagrams just all text? My dad can't send it to me because it has the symbols instead of the letters. I'm looking for the philidor, kings gambit, danish gambit, and the four knights openings specifically.