In german, you typically have the verb is second position. This is a typical sentence so the verb must come in second position. You could also say “Immer spiele ich Scharch”. It is correct as the verb comes second but usually people put the subject first to make it stand out. May be could you use Immer first if you wanted to insiste that you always play chess.

Just remeber the rule: verb in second position.

I’m no teacher or anything but as far as I can tell it’s the rule that you use words like oft, immer, manchmal after the verb. I can’t think of any exceptions right now. You can put it to the beginning of the sentence but that’s not really how people speak.

Subject then verb is why.

Yes. Yoda German was?