James Duprey

James came to chess late, and he'll tell you that's part of the appeal. He picked up the game in his thirties, mostly out of boredom, and found something he wasn't expecting: a puzzle that never quite runs out of new angles, no matter how many times you sit down with it.

He's not chasing a rating or a title. What draws James back to the board again and again is the thinking itself, the slow unraveling of a position, the moment a plan finally clicks into place after twenty minutes of staring. He treats every game like a small problem worth solving properly.

James is a patient student of the game, more interested in understanding why a move works than in memorizing that it does. That mindset shapes his writing too: practical, unhurried, and aimed at anyone who wants to actually understand chess rather than just play it.

These days, James writes about the game from the perspective of someone who came to it as an adult and had to learn it the hard way, one honest mistake at a time.

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