Posted 06 June 2016 - 12:01 PM
I used to enjoy chess but am totally outclassed by my mother and sister, the sister (3 years my junior) played for the England under 13s before loosing interest in her teens, and my mother played on the Suffolk woman's team for more than a decade.
when Mum started taking it seriously and wanted to beat me every time I went around, about 15 years ago that put me off playing against her, and none of my friends played.
I tried playing against chess computers and medium difficulty was about right for me to get a good game but stand a chance of winning occasional, and was more interesting than playing against mum because the program had many diferant "personalities" giving you some variety.
try some exercises to learn strategy, try things like 8 pawns vs a queen, or knights vs bishops to give you a perspective on what the pieces can do, I am talking about how the pieces can work together, e.g. wining with queen and rook (castle) is easy but how do you win a game with just a King and a Knight (horse)?
it is possible to loose a game in 2 moves, look up fools mate, but scholars mate (mate in 4 moves) is far better known, and only an id10t would get caught with fools mate because it requires a really foolish opening, where as if you do not know what to look for you can be caught out with scholars.
there are libraries worth of material available to read on chess, I am not suggesting doing a lot of reading but looking up some basic information, be it looking at chess websites or youtube videos can seriously help your game.