I have written about the other popular black defenses to E4 as white’s first move. Since I have already mentioned the French Defense, Caro Kann Defense, and Scandinavian Defense, it’s only fair that I at least mention the Sicilian because of it’s popularity.
The Sicilian begins after 1. e4 c5
You may look at this and wonder what the point is of black moving the pawn to C5. It accomplishes a few things. First, it means that white cannot move their Queen’s pawn to D4 without it being captured. Second, it does allow black’s queen to put the white king in the event that white ever moves that queen’s pawn one or two spaces.
Second, it means the the knight on B8 can move to C6 without blocking the pawn from moving because that pawn has already moved two spaces. This gives your queen more options and then if white is dumb enough to move anything to B4 or D4 then it can be killed with either a pawn or knight!
Look at the next image to see something very common that happens when I play chess online using the Sicilian Defense.
White is moving the Bishop out to C4 to attack the weak F7 pawn near the King. White is hoping for a scholar’s mate. Black moves the knight as I suggested above. Then look at what happens next in many cases.
White moves the queen to F3 and almost has a scholar’s mate, but then black messes it up by forking the queen, bishop, and the F7 pawn that white was trying to attack with both the queen and bishop.
White is in a difficult position. They can’t protect both their queen and bishop. They can move the queen near the bishop to capture the knight if it captures the bishop, but they are also losing time because they can’t move any of their other pieces and start bringing their bishops into the game until they defend their queen.
That’s only one of infinite possibilities that could happen in a chess game, but it happens often enough that I used it for this post as an introduction to the Sicilian Defense.
Nextdoor.com is a great site in some ways because people who live nearby in your neighborhood can see your posts.
But they really need to change their spam policy.
Apparently because I am posting about the game of chess and sites to play chess then it is “repeatedly” posting similar content.
I bet that if a man got on there and posted thoughts on each football game that happened, he wouldn’t be censored. I would like a better explanation for this and since I can’t post on nextdoor.com, I will post this on other places and talk about the problems of censorship. I can easily give Ted Talk any minute about the problems censorship causes on society.
In fact, what I do best is writing and so since this is my blog, I want to mention some key issues around censorship. First, when people are not allowed so say their opinions on a topic, the entire world becomes unaware that there are people with those opinions exist.
If you ask too many questions in most churches, you will be censored because pastors don’t have the answers and they don’t want you to ask the questions. You will be called a heretic for “questioning God” when what you are doing is asking questions about the Bible or the preaching of that pastor, neither of which are synonymous with God.
If you talk about Covid and say that Vaccines are dangerous and anything about Covid that differs from what the government is telling you, YouTube will delete your videos. I know because this has happened to me, including the ones where it wasn’t me who said things but my former cohost Monique. who had her channel deleted. I may not be friends with Monique anymore but even she doesn’t deserve that.
And apparently, on Nextdoor.com you can complain about sports teams or Taylor Swift all you want but someone posting about chess openings is somehow a danger to society that we must protect our neighbors from knowing about. No wonder people are ignorant about chess if now it’s going to be censored.
The second and biggest problem is that we live in a world with no privacy. Companies track your web browsing activity so they can sell you their products based on whatever artificial intelligence they have that automatically detects what you have been looking at on Amazon or Walmart and then you get popup ads and emails about it. The government and most companies spy on you and want to know everything about you, that is, until you say or do something they don’t like. Then there are 3 phases that happen.
They silence you and prevent you from talking about something whether in public or on social media.
If you don’t stop trying to communicate the truth, they will arrest you and put you in jail.
Finally, if all else fails, they will kill you
But the truth always finds a way to come out. And when the truth comes out, it often does with a blast of light and a flood or tears. The truth comes out with a Rainbow the same way a gay person comes out.
Remember, you can kill a person, but you can’t kill the truth itself!
Mathew 10:28Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
I thought it would be good to do a post where I review the different sites, I play chess on regularly. I may need to update this list if I find more sites that are a fun experience for playing or learning chess. This post contains my top three recommended websites for serious chess players.
Lichess is the best site for playing western chess and its variants. I’ve said it before and the reason I say it’s the best is because it has no ads and runs entirely on donations as an open-source project. But that’s not all. It also has great tutorials for teaching the game of chess. It also has an easier to use interface compared to chess.com in my opinion. It’s much easier to find the option to play variants against the computer or real people because there are fewer menus to navigate through.
Play Strategy is a Lichess based site that also has chess but includes other games such as Shogi(Japanese Chess) and Xiangqi(Chinese Chess). It has plenty of other games that I don’t even know how to play such as Go and Othello. If someone is into a variety of board games it’s definitely a good site but few people know about it and therefore it is hard to find people to play with. However, it also has bots that you can play against in case there are no humans available to play a specific game you are interested in.
Lishogi is specifically dedicated to the game of Shogi which is known as Japanese Chess. The game is very similar to chess with a few new pieces and the drop rule which allows you to drop captured pieces back on the board that you have captured similarly to Crazyhouse Chess. There are a lot of players on this site and as would be expected, many of them are from Japan and are really good.
Conclusion
While there are many chess websites available, be wary of those that are full of ads and microtransactions. Playing chess should be free and no one needs to spend any money unless they are buying books or hiring a chess coach.
All recommendations in this post will of course require an internet connection because they are websites. I will make a separate post about chess programs that you can play when not connected to the internet (after you download them in the first place of course!).
Today is the last day of Pride Month 2024. I couldn’t think of a better way to end this month than write a long essay in response to a video sent by a good friend. This is my last LGBTQIA related post for quite a while and I will normally resume with the chess related posts, but this opportunity to say what I really think could not be missed on the final day of June.
My friend Poffo shared this video with me and wanted to know my thoughts.
The average person does not have the experience nor the scientific understanding of the causes of gay and transgender people. A great deal of them are actually intersex. Their chromosomes or hormone levels cause them to feel something other than cisgender and heterosexual. This is a biological reason and has always existed as long as people have.
This man in the video says demons are sexual. But the question is, do demons even have bodies or are they spirits only? If someone has no body, can they be sexual?
It’s important to note that being a Christian or another religion does not change your sexual orientation or gender identity. It may change your behavior such as a gay person marrying someone of the opposite sex because they think that is the way God wants them to live. That does not in fact make them less gay. What it does is simply conform to the way others want them to be. Some are fine with this and if it works for them, then more power to them.
I come at this from a perspective of believing in God but I think we are all different and that’s okay. I ultimately don’t think it matters what you do very much with your body because your body is not the real you but the soul or spirit within you.
I am transgender and quite gay but I live a celibate life for ethical, health, and somewhat spiritual reasons. I support all LGBTQIA people to live their life as they choose. I urge anyone who is gay or trans who happens to be reading this to not take the Christians too seriously who tell you God hates you or that you are going to hell.
You see, according to them, a person like me who does not even have sex with anyone is still going to hell for the crime of thinking gay thoughts or for altering my body to conform to what I have always felt is right. But Jesus taught people to love their neighbor as themselves and the anti-LGBT Christians are hypocrites and not doing that. They say their actions are out of love but the way reason I know they are wrong is because they want people to live a life of dishonesty. Consider the case of the gay man. What is his option? To pretend to be interested in women and have sex with them when he doesn’t even like them? That would be dishonest. Or the lesbian, should she have sex with a man and risk all the diseases and pregnancy that comes from that when she doesn’t even like him? And the problem with trans people like me is that no matter what I do, I will ALWAYS be a sinner doomed to hell according to hateful bigots because I am NEITHER the man or woman they would like me to be. But I am right with God and don’t assume you know who I am, what I am, or what my relationship with God is because of how my body (which will pass away when I die anyway) looks.
Remember what Jesus said here:
Matthew 7:7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
The main thing to remember is that people who CALL themselves Christians commit fornication, adultery, child molestation, and all manner of murder and dishonest acts, and yet they don’t look at their own sins but then they go “Ha! A gay person! Let me be mean to him and pick on him so I don’t feel bad about the shit I have done.”
In this post I have 3 images. I want opinions on which background looks best in combination with the chess pieces.
The first option is a standard black and white chessboard background. It works because the pieces are still visible because whoever designed the Merida chess set made the black pieces not completely black but just a very dark gray.
The second option is what I call C0-40 based on the hex codes of the shades of gray I used.
The third option is called AA-55 based on the hex codes.
I can use any colors for the checkerboard pattern but these 3 were chosen for people with colorblindness so everything can be seen. People have different eyes and using red and blue for example would not be visible to everyone nor would it be traditional for the game of chess.
So please leave your comments on which one you like best!
Chastity White Rose 
