Ygtjki

There are many people who want to play chess with you. You can play chess online! Online sites such as chess.com and lichess.org will match you with opponents of similar rating so you should win about 50 percent of the time. Furthermore, playing online as well as studying chess will immensely improve your chess, and maybe you'll play your friend again and this time you will win!

There are lots of ways to play with a handicap in chess. One way is to give one player a starting material advantage, where the weaker player starts with an extra queen, or the stronger player replaces their queen with a bishop/rook, or starts with some of their pawns missing - anything that weakens one player's starting position can be used to even the odds. Another means of handicapping can be used in timed games, where the stronger player has a shorter clock than the weaker one, so can spend less time thinking about their moves.

If you can change your attitude from this being a competition that you are "losing" to this being a tutorial, that should help a lot. Every time you play a game, you get more famailiar with lines and their responses. Consider each move to be a question (what sort of responses are this to this move?) rather than a challenge.

Getting beat should not deter you from having fun, there's an element of purity to chess logic, a bit similar to that of learning mathematics, there is a peaceful quiet beauty to it. Think of it as there being something to learn in every game you play regardless of the outcome, shift your mindset onto better understanding the game and how to reason about it as opposed to beating a specific player.

Diversify your opponents, for example start playing online blitz/rapid games on lichess, quickly your rating will settle and your average opponent will be at the same level as you currently are, which will naturally lead to more balanced games. Like anything else, the competitive element should only be of major relevance if one intends to take the game to a professional level. Speaking of which, there's a very good related movie called "Innocent moves" or "Searching for Bobby Fischer", which you might find interesting: without spoiling, it's about a kid who discovers chess in a park and develops a strong sense of curiosity and passion for the game, who also happens to have a natural ability for it, but soon starts to have conflicting thoughts about it as soon as it becomes competitive: where it's expected of him to become the best, to beat everyone, to ceaselessly improve and to never fail, in other words they turn chess into another mindless responsibility for the kid in which he has to succeed as opposed to simply playing chess for the sheer fun of it, which should be the only point to playing any game.

Other than playing online, consider just getting into the habit of solving chess tactics where you have to find the best moves, treat it as any other puzzle game: there's no opponent and you'd simply be trying to get better at solving puzzles by discovering more about chess strategy and the art of coordinating your pieces in order to achieve specific objectives: checkmating, winning a piece, securing a draw, etc. The better you get at it the higher the gratification. There are various website you can start from: lichess, chesstempo, chess24.

You might also find it fun and instructive to watch chess lectures: in particular, Yasser Seirawan lectures tend to be quite fun and easy to go through, not only he provides a lot of insight and reveals a lot of the reasoning that goes into each move of a chosen game, he complements with a lot of lighter moments with his fun anecdotes. For example, his coverage of one of the 1972 Spassky-Fischer games, or the famous miniature games, ... there are many to choose from.

In regular tournaments both players write the moves down and play with clocks to make sure both players have the same amount of time for their moves. It is normal after the game for the players to analyze the game. They can do this easily because they have written the moves down. When I lose in a tournament I almost always ask my opponent of they would like to go over the game with me. Even if I "got smashed" this makes it much more interesting for me and I always learn something. Most opponents are friendly and helpful and will agree to do this.

To make the games more even the best way is to use the clocks. Start by giving both players 10 minutes each on the clocks. In subsequent games the loser gets another minute and the winner gets one minute less. If you reach 9 minutes versus 1 minute and still lose then go to 9 minutes 30 seconds vs 30 seconds, then 9 min 45 vs 15 seconds etc. Sooner or later you will come to a stage where you take it in turns to win.

This question transcends chess I think.

In any game/sport, there are people who are better than you and those that are worse. You can learn a lot by losing, way more than you can learn by winning against easy opponents.

Analyze your games. Ask why your opponent made moves he made that you didn't see when you were playing with them. Get better.

My local chess club is small and I am the strongest of the bunch. It's much less fun to win all the time and learn nothing from it. Losing and learning from those losses is a quality problem to have.

Honestly, it is not fun at all if you feel you can and will never win. Losing sometimes is fine, but losing all the time is extremely frustrating.

I think you can make it more fun by doing a few things:

1. Make it a goal to improve your chess.
Solving tactics puzzles can be fun and feel rewarding to solve. They also improve your chess. If you improve, you can reach the point where you are able to win sometimes against your opponent. It is much more fun to play chess when you feel you have a chance to win. You can improve a lot by learning to see simple tactics quickly and by being mindful of undefended pieces (yours and your opponent's).

2. Go over your games with your opponent.
This will give you some perspective that will help you understand where you are making mistakes. You may find that you make the same sort of mistakes often. You can identify the issues and know where you need to focus to improve. In this way it plays into point 1 by helping you improve. It also gives you a chance to enjoy a chess activity with your opponent without feeling the stress of making a mistake like in a game. You can walk through the game and discuss what-ifs and even play them out a bit. You sort of turn chess into a cooperative game for a time when you are walking through a game together.

3. Play a larger variety of opponents.
You can play online at various websites against players of similar skill. The rating system is great because you can be matched with an opponent that you can beat, but who can also potentially beat you. I find that this tension makes chess much more fun. This will give you other exposure to chess where you feel you can win. It may make you feel less frustrated playing against a player you are not likely to beat. You won't feel that you lose every game anymore so it can be easier to brush off those loses.

Here's what I used to do while instructing the kids (usually the weaker player) in our local chess club: We would play a normal game of chess under standard rules, but the weaker player could request to swap colors at any time during the game. Like this, the stronger player gets a real challenge too. After the first switch, he's busy trying to regain the advantage he had over you a few moments ago.
The weaker player trains to detect when his position gets "really bad" and he is about to get checkmated soon.

Overall, the games run for a longer time like this, which may resolve some of the frustration that you seem to experience. Have fun and continue playing!

I noticed one thing playing chess: I adjust my level to my opponent's level.

If I play against a weak player, I play weak too.

Against a strong player I play better.

I don't know what the reason for this is, maybe because I lose interest playing against a weak opponent.

So, I prefer to play against strong players even if I lose.

Sir, when you loose you learn many new lines, variations, tactics etc. and improve your database of knowledge which definitely helps to beat others in the game.

Don't play with that opponent :)

That or ask for piece/clock odds, but they'd have to agree.