ESL Blogs

I spend hours playing chess because I find it so much fun.

The day it stops being fun is the day I give up. 
Magnus Carlsen - youngest world chess champion

Hello folks, 

I have chosen number 7, cuz I like it, more than 9 or 5, which I also like.

And easiest to write is blog, I don't know what is difference between story and essay.

To be hones, I don't know precisely what word "hobby" means.

Just learns somewhere that hobby is "an activity that you do for pleasure when you are not working".

So, what I like to do when I am not working? Can be spending time online considered as hobby? Hope not. 

I also like to swim in swimming pool (rarely due to my laziness), running, playing football (also not often), even going to sauna, hard russian style (at least 2 times per month). Are they all hobbies?

At the end, I also like eating sweet things for pleasure when I am not working, so is eating also hobby?

What I want to call hobby, is what you do for pleasure, and not only, but mostly with passion in it, and it doesn't mean you have to be perfect in your hobby, enough that you like it and crazy about it.

For example, I can surely say my hobby is chess.

I am not perfect at chess, but I just like the process of it, even there are some games when you loose, but you enjoy battle on chess board, which pleases and satisfies you.

I can talk about chess 24\7, it is never boring for me (don't confuse playing chess with boring people).

Also I like reading books, articles about chess, life stories of great chess masters, it is really interesting for me.

Roots of chess interest come from family by father side: grandfather, father and uncles, cousins, most of male generation can play chess on different level, but among them grandfather and uncle (father's elder brother) liked it much. So, when I learnt to play, I loved it so much (soon in teen age, and still, my game style preferences are strategies over actions, even PC games, but this is another story:).

As I was growing up, my chess skills also grew up with me, so that I started to beat them one by one, started from cousins, brothers, then uncles, father, and grandfather, so at the end most of them refused to play with me (except uncle and grandfather).

During school and university times, I still loved to play with my friends, classmates, but had lack of chess games in my life, untill I came across chess.com, in 2010. I started to play online since then, and still playing there.

So, simply as running and swimming is fitness for body, chess is fitness for my brain:)