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>>I bet you are a pretty good chess player, aren't you? That's not a leading question in any way, or an invitation to be boastful (you wouldn't be), just curious.
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>Mike, Naomi is very good chess player. And I believe she was/is a Master of Sports in International Checkers (100-square board checkers). Master of Sports is a very significant sports title in Russia.

No, I'm really a very bad chess player (never studied, etc.) but I enjoy playing in the parks blitz nevertheless. Almost every time I lose.

My father was a good player and he loved to play in parks too. I used to watch him playing in St. Petersburg's suburbs, in our nice parks. In my youth living in Russia I only played checkers in the parks sometimes, but here I almost never saw people playing checkers, so I switched to play chess.