How can you do it?

Well, I am not sure whether this is the best place for this question but... here it is. How can you cope with all the things you do in this site? I saw many players in many groups playing many games and many tournaments and still posting, joining the forums, quizzes and even administrating some of the groups!! How is this possible?

I fell in love with chess since I have memory but my daily routines and obligations just don't allow me to do so much. Recently I even went down in my ratings due to my lack of time to think or reflect about a move -I had a dealine for a project. So, unless you live for the game (or the site) it is very difficult to cope with all that. How can you do it? I would like to know your opinions about it.

CIAO

Rebelde

for some people, chess (and this site!) is their #1 hobby :)

I know you

This site is my number one also, but... sometimes I just can't handle it! I need some tricks I think

Personally I keep the correspondence chess to a minimal  (around ten games with 3 days or more per move), and spend more time on live chess/taking advantage of everything else the site offers. This system only binds me at most like 30 mins every 3 days if need be (though I don't think I have gone 3 days with that little time spent here in the past 3 months :D)

But how do you explain to belong to so many groups or join so many games? I think in some cases, like yours, bondiggity, it is as simple as that, but I saw players playing 50 or more games! Some even belonging to several groups, administrating others and joining tournaments!  Unbelievable. I think I couldn't do it.

For people who are online a lot, perhaps as part of their job, they would be able to fit chess.com activities in between work commitments: during their coffee break, for instance, or while waiting for a particular task to complete that precludes them from any other work task.

Hi

I play about 50 games at any one time. I don't enjoy spending long on any one position. I probably make each move after looking at the board for about 1 minute. Sometimes I spend longer - in a really complex position I may even play through some lines using the analysis board or consult a source such as an opening book or Game Explorer - but usually I don't spend much longer than a minute or two. I know that my rating would probably be higher if I played fewer games and moved more carefully - but it's a hobby not a job. I play for fun. And I enjoy moving relatively quickly.

However, I have a very busy job and it isn't even my number one hobby (my number one hobby is being a drummer in a band and that is very time consuming). So I don't have time to play much live chess. Even playing, say, 5 minute games would be hard for me. Often I have just three or four minutes between meetings at work, or before I go out to band practice or before I have dinner to make a few moves or to respond to a message board like this. I just fit in lots of two or three minutes each day between things. However, I probably spend a total of about an hour or more per day on the site.  

I think you need some practice to make moves. I just saw your pages, 'artfizz' and 'swesland' and your record is impressive. For the time being I will try to concentrate in what I can deal with, but as many games as you... mmmm that's tough. Maybe, eventually, when I improve my skills I will go to your sites and play you (piling up even more your games), hehe. Thanks, guys!

CIAO

Rebelde

My max is about 20 correspondence games.  Any more than that and I start to pull my hair out.  I don't play live chess since I don't have the right driver installed.  Even so I belong to a fair number of groups and I am a regular contributor in at least one of them.  I "manage" one group but it is new and really hasn't got up and running yet.  I think that I may quit several of the groups that I currently belong to since (in my opinion) they rarely have anything interesting to talk about.

At the moment I'm playing over 220 games on the trot, I run 6 groups, I'm in around 30 groups, & I check out the forums regulary, in all about 1 hour to an hour & a half to fly through all the games, the most time consuming is the messages, it takes for ever to get through them, but in all if I put in three hours a day then I'm fine, but like this week when I came back from a three week vacation, I was completly saturated with tons of messages, alerts, games that it took me a good few days & many hours to catch up, now things are back to normal, an hour here an hour there & Bob's your Uncle & Fanny's your aunt, like mentioned above, t'is indeed a fine hobby that pays to play!

You should ask Awardchess how he/she does it. Usually has at close to 1000 games going at one time. Most of those are from tourneys he/she host. Has a couple of groups.