I was recently looking up an old friend on the USCF player looker up and ended up going down the rabbit hole of clicking on tournaments and other players, eventually leading me to the 2019 NJ Open. Near the top, I see a name that I recognize: Brandon Jacobson
https://ratings.fide.com/profile/30901561

Back in 2012, I played at a small local tournament and beat him pretty easily (sure I made mistakes in the game too, but I won lots of material). Of course, he just became a GM in 2020. When I played him, he was only 8 y.o. and 1000 rating points less than he is now. But this is the closest I think I'll ever get!

Wow you beat a 1500, congrats!

I love that you made a 2+2 account just to say this.

Our city has an annual match against another city every year; there are 12 boards, and each board plays a 2 game match against their opponent. In 2006 I participated against a young kid I'd never seen, rated about 1900. In the first game, he made a number of weird moves, and I distinctly remember thinking "this kid must be a tactical wizard, because he just doesn't get chess at all. Doubt he'll amount to much". I won the match 2-0 and expected I would probably never see him again.

Kid: Eric Hansen (multi time Canadian champion, GM, chessbrah)

We still laugh about it sometimes as he pounds me into dust on Sub Sunday.

I blew a win against a 10 year old in a tournament some years ago. He's still in high school and is now 2315 USCF, 2215 FIDE. I won't be completely shocked if some day I look back on that blown win as the closest I came to beating a GM...

I got beat by an average chess player in my first ever chess game played. 1. e4 g5 (strong unorthodox style, so to say, and my style) 2. d4 f6 (protecting the pawn). 3. Qh5+ where it took me two seconds to see, I am mated.

He got lucky of course, that the 2. d4 attacks the g5-pawn. There was pretty much no way I could see the long unknown-path Qh5+ move, plus understand its meaning, as the moves were played as fast as possible, and the time went for making the first sensible move, the 2.- f6 in this case. I would have won this with white, so wasn't much of an achievement but for the records, and where I am the one having lost after my first two moves, resulting in a mate after 3. Qh5, in my first chess game played.

Another strange thing was that some time later, I beat my as ignorant opponents every time during my next 100 or so games without having studied any chess. Till one of them did study, and beat me. That made me to study the game as I was impressed by the way he placed the pieces in the opening and how I was not able to crack it, like I did during the 100 games before that.

My aggressive style won those games irresistibly; no other edge. It is often hard even for 200-500 points stronger opponents to face when one is at least an average player. Pure aggression beat many 2000-2200 opponents ever since that, while when they were white, they got frustrated while trying to run me over and blew it. It would have been easy for them to just grind me down.

My only game against a GM was an FRC blitz game where I had a clear edge if not a winning position till I changed the queens and was weirdly suddenly losing. He got very lucky in that game as even when the queens were not there, he was still sweating (I think I even felt it at this point) while I was trying to spot the way to win, that by miracle wasn't there, and even in the endgame, that should also have been a win for me, he by miracle managed to stop my pawns, that usually win, and then his centralized king beat me.

lol, i love all the guys here who create alts just to say something they don't want associated with their main