I don’t know which is more disappointing: The situation itself (but I don’t have a lot of information about the whole thing), or the comments section of that article further proving its point.
The moment chess got popular and the gaming community got its hands on it, I knew US chess clubs becoming yet another BO-filled neckbeard haven like half of my country’s gaming community was fucking inevitable.
In the words of TopChess, “Checky checky mate mate”
Growing pains for the chess world
As someone who only recently returned to chess.com and chess in general, I’m narrowly leading in an endgame in my ongoing correspondence game against a 1000 (which might be creeping towards a draw) and somehow once beat the 1500 doggo bot, but whenever I reach the 800s in Rapid I slip back into the 700s because I only know like 3 opening lines, and it especially doesn’t help that 680-740s love experimenting with the non-e4 opening moves as white, most of which I don’t know the proper defense/punishment for as black except perhaps the e and d pawn push for Nc3 and getting in with your queen through the fortress’ unguarded diagonal for the Catalan if they play g3 first (I do know the englund, caro-kann and french as well as the 4 knights game but most of those assume the opponent is predictable enough to play e4). As white I know a bit more theory (king’s pawn, vienna, catalan and while not very effective on triple-digit players, the ballistic missile gambit).
And I haven’t yet memorized a lot of book moves so my Blitz elo is in the toilet because I keep losing on time to complete noobs
0-0. Lawyers are victorious.