Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yugoslavian
Imo, having enough WIM for 7+ years is going to be the biggest issue. I'd guess you're a dog to actually enjoy chess enough to go after it hard enough. If you enjoy chess that much, you would have played a bunch more earlier in life.
I'd favor any random person who has barely played chess (or hasn't) at age 30 to become 2200+ USCF by age 40 if proper motivation was applied (e.g. someone they love would die or they'd get $10 million or something). I have no idea where to put the % chance of it, though. I'd like to think (not being a master myself at all) a very high % of people simply couldn't do it, but I think that is simply wishful thinking.
Very few people have the mental fortitude or slightly insane mental makeup to follow-through on a project like this unless they absolutely love chess (and somehow didn't realize they loved it for almost 30 years of their life).
Oh, also, you can't just love chess for this, you have to love beating people and raising your rating. I do think a lot of players love chess but basically gave up trying to get better at actually playing it simply b/c that aspect of it wasn't fun for them. That's the part I liked the most but also why I don't play chess and can't ever seem to get myself back into it. I know I will be a depressed mess unless I get better and I know that won't be trivially easy like it was when I was weaker/younger.
Well, first I just want to say to everyone that I'm going to start putting more work into this blog here on 2p2. I have spent a lot of time posting games for analysis and asking general questions on Chess.com but I'm transitioning more to doing that here and on a couple of other forums online. I'm looking for groups of people who take the game seriously and that isn't always what one will find over on Chess.com.
Where I have been playing, 99% of my games, is ICC. I've only fallen further in love with that place and become pretty addicted to it. I have started using Blitzin exclusively and learned a ton of commands for it and I just couldn't imagine playing online chess any other way at this point. The competition is fierce on there and I think the auto pairing pools are fantastic.
This also leads into a few new developments, too: I have played my first OTB USCF rated games and I have started incorporating blitz into my training regime with fantastic results thus far. My first two OTB rated games were losses. They were also both against 1500+ players and both went 35+ moves. I learned a lot from both losses. First loss was a result of not castling until move 18 and feeling pretty stupid about that and the second loss was just a matter of a better player with a lot of experience. He attacked my 1. e4 opening with the Latvian Gambit and I handled it wrong at the time. I wound up totally cramped on my queenside and couldn't respond to his kingside attack. Checkmate on move 36.
As for blitz - I stopped hanging pieces a while ago already. I never do it other than now and then in blitz chess but in standard, it's very rare. That I reached that point, and everyone at the club and online was doing it, I decided to start playing some 5/0 blitz on ICC. It's worked out very, very well. As a result of playing blitz I have developed a whole new (and better) opening repertoire, move much faster during games, and have progressed tactically to the extent that people think it's laughable. In the past week, I have just started winning a lot of games I would have previously lost.
I open 1. e4 with the white pieces 100% of the time. I ideally looked to go into the Scotch. I like to avoid going into the Spanish right now for a few reasons and I like the Scotch better than the Italian. I'm toying around with the idea of using the Vienna Game as a surprise opening in blitz and rapid but for now, I'm working on the Scotch Game. With the black pieces, 9/10 times I defend against 1. e4 with the French defense. It's become my staple defense and what I used in my first OTB game. Vs. 1. d4 I play the Accelerated Semi Slav or the QGD, with a transposition possible of course. My only exceptions to this is that sometimes I'll just respond to 1. e4 with e5 and play the open game. Other than this, though ...this is my opening repertoire at the time and what I've settled into playing and studying.
My standard rating has crossed 1200 on ICC now while my 3-minute and 5-minute auto pairing pool ratings are over 900. My 15-minute auto pairing rating is 1188. All of these ratings have started climbing in the last 3-5 days and I fully expect these to really start moving up now. I haven't played on other sites in weeks (other than a few games on ChessCube) but my ratings are clearly approaching 1500+ in live standard there. On Chesscube, my long rating is already ~1450. As for ChessCube - it's my web based backup. When I feel like web based chess, I play there at this point. I find the competition to be better than Chess.com's and I like their preset pools, like the 25+10 rapid. It's only $6/mo. for the VIP there and with ICC, I don't need Chess.com's Diamond.
Now, getting to the post I've quoted: Without writing a novel about my personal life at this time, I will just say that it's certainly been a unique journey thus far and I wouldn't say that I found chess only recently but simply just returned to it when I had an opportunity to. I learned the moves by myself, out of a book, at 4. I started a chess club with my Kindergarten principle teacher. Shortly thereafter, life took a couple of bad turns and I never really got much of a minute to breath and turn my sites back on who I really was and what my true interests were until somewhat recently in life. The day I started playing chess online and thought back to how much I liked it when I was a kid, was the day I started feeling like I truly found the game I wanted to play for the rest of my days. I'm beyond thrilled that I've come back to it. Or should I say, I'm thrilled that it's found me again.
As said, I'm going to spend more time posting here on these forums and updating this blog at this point. There's quite a bit going on with me pertaining to the pursuit of this goal so do expect pretty frequent updates from now on. I've been working through My System (Chapter 6 now) and Brilliancies (up to the 3rd game) as well as doing tactics on ChessTempo and studying ICC videos. I'm learning TONS and loving every minute of it. I'm actually about to go put up a seek for some games on ICC but I'm sure I'll wind up thinking of something to add to this soon, or come back to edit something.
Thanks to all who have commented and followed thus far and as said, do expect more frequent updates to this in the future.