I'm looking to get into chess! I've been dabbling the last couple weeks and really been enjoying it. I played a bit as a kid, and then through highschool and occasionally as an adult played a ton of chess variants. Thousands of games of crazyhouse and giveaway, but generally these were in 1/0 or 0/2 type speed games. So I have little experience with the slower games and just normal chess. I played a couple longer time games and really enjoyed it, so I'm going to give it a shot.

There are a couple tournaments here at the end of January/beginning of February so I'm thinking if I get into it an enjoy it maybe I'll try to take the weekend to do one of those just for fun!

I just setup the chess.com free trial, and will decide after the week if I keep it or not.

Starting Stats on Chess.com
Bullet - 1058 (52 games)
Blitz - 1090 (83 games)
Rapid - 1390 (6 games)
Puzzles - 1900 (200/294)


Just going to set some weekly goals to try to hold myself accountable. Will check in on Sundays. I'm not really sure what the best way to learn is, so I'm just going to work on some slower games (and going through the error evaluations after) and puzzles!

Goal for rest of this week -
30 Rapid Games
200 Puzzles

The first time I played a tournament it COMPLETELY changed my attitude towards chess. I wish I did it years sooner. Definitely give it a shot.

How did it completely change your attitude Army Eye? I think timing wise one early February will work for me. Also would give me a chance to try to do some puzzles or something from a book on an actual board. I bet it gets weird to look at it like that if you've almost only ever done on computer.

Just squeaked in with the goals tonight.

GAMES - 30 Rapid games, 17 wins/12 loss/1 draw - 1390 -> 1458. It was a lot of fun, no games probably worth sharing, but I had some good personal takeaways.

-There's some opening traps I feel into at times that I bet were pretty common and I just need to learn them.
-I realized I think my default response was just to trade, probably from a lot of crazyhouse. I'm trying to think more about whether that trade helps me or my opponent more, and only do that if I have a good reason to. But a lot of times I'm really just not sure who would be better.
-Endgames I'm terrible. When you get down to just king and pawns, or maybe a minor piece it almost seems like its a completely different game. Seems like you have to less width to calculate, but have to consider way more depth.
-Even with 10 min games I found myself in time trouble a few times. I tried to play a couple blitz games and now I found myself considering/calculating so much more than it seemed impossible to play a 3 min game.

PUZZLES - 214 completed (118 first try), 1900 ->2198. A couple takeaways from puzzles

-A lot of times I see the "method" a pin/fork etc, but my order of operations is a bit off. So where instead of winning a rook I could win a queen
-Similar but more broadly, I need to look for the "best answer", instead of just stopping when I have a "good answer". For example, I had a few where I could win a queen, but there was actually a mate hiding. Or I saw a mate in 4 where there was a tricky way to mate in 2. Probably a good skillset to carry over to games as well. I think I'm going to aim more for quality, and take my time a lot more and focus on % correct vs # solved.



So goals for this week this week:
40 rapid games
100 puzzles - Goal of 75% right first time
Find some kind of a book from the library to setup some positions with a real board. (Any recommendations welcomed!)

Oh, before I had ever played a tournament, I sometimes just played blitz chess online for fun and that was the extent of it. Once I played a tournament, it was like, OK this is awesome, I want to actually get good at this and take it seriously. And it has gradually taken over my life more and more lol

IRL tournament is just completely different. It's one of those things where you don't know until you know and hard to describe in words.

Seeing your log makes me want to get back into chess at least 1% more/sooner than before seeing your log.

The thing about going to a tournament is you understand much more the gravity of a game of chess.

When you play online, you might as well be playing Clash Royale or Solitaire or Candy Crush - it's a fun little diversion by yourself for a few minutes, you want to win, but if you lose, whatever. If you win, nice little 2 second dopamine hit, then back to something else.

When you play live, you are sitting down facing a human being in what feels like a real clash of wills and intellect that's going to last for potentially hours. All around you, there are other similar battles going. People are looking at your game with a critical eye and making judgments on who's better or worse. The whole thing just feels like something real and serious. Losing hurts. You and your opponent and others pick over the game afterwards to figure out what went wrong and right. Winning means something. You'll be up late that night, laying in bed, thinking about the great move you played, or lamenting the missed opportunity you failed to take. You'll probably have an idea come to you while you're doing something else a day or two later, and you'll need to pull out a board to see if it would have worked.

The early days of playing tournaments and learning and improving are just the best days of chess.

I was kind of on the fence about looking into the tournament but these posts convinced me to try it. I did 2 apparently back when I was 11-12, but I don't really remember a ton. I think at that age the event itself was the big deal. We stayed in a hotel etc.

Going to reach out to ask some questions. The tournament has a U1100 section, but I'm not sure if that is just for kids? I was able to look myself up online from those 2 tournaments apparently I still have a mid 500 rating. But I'm not sure if that level adults can play in? I'm not sure how it works.

If the tournament information doesn't say otherwise, then assume that anyone with a qualifying rating can enter that section. It it's limited to kids it should say scholastic, junior, U18, something like that. Usually sections are not tied to age. An entire tournament that is age-restricted is much more common

Gotcha, thanks Army, I checked with the tournament people it's any age. Wife is supportive so I think I'll sign up for that. Second weekend of February!

I got pretty sick last week, and it was impossible to try to focus on games so I barely played. Only 7 games earlier in the week before I got sick. Did some puzzles on and off though, mostly on mobile.

GAMES - 7 rapid games - 5 Wins/2 Loss 1458 ->1491

PUZZLES - 186 completed (97 first try), 2198 ->2297. Only 52% right the first time, this is quite a bit lower than the 75% goal, although not sure how realistic that was. I'm not sure what the best thing to do here is except keep trying.

Book - I got "100 Endgames You Must Know" from the library. Library near me was pretty limited, but I think county library closer to the cities has a lot more. I haven't started it yet, and I'm not sure of the level, but hopefully not too advanced. I went through boxes of old childhood stuff to find my old chess board.

I also found the lessons/training tools on chess.com I did some of the passed pawns and more advanced mating technique ones, the bishop and rook one was a lot and I don't think I've memorized them. It's hard to know what I should try to focus on. Seems like main things could be: Openings/Puzzles/Endgame training/Review other's games/Playing.

Goals this week -
20 Rapid Games
200 Puzzles - maybe better to just aim for rating increase instead of some arbitrary %
1/2 hour per night of the endgame book

Best is just to ask the tournament director and they'll direct you to the right section.

It comes across badly in Queen's Gambit (when she shows up and they try to put her in the beginner section), but in most cases, the TD will have a good idea after talking to you where you belong. Just tell them you play a bit online, your blitz rating on chess.com is whatever, you've never played a live tournament, and they'll put you in the right place.

Perfect, yeah I e-mailed them and asked, and sounds like U1100 is the place to go!

Games - 20 Rapid Games 9 wins/11 Losses. 1491 -> 1476. I tried to play a couple games on the phone and had some issues with dropping pieces on the wrong square as well as just not being fully foocused, might be best to stick with puzzles if I'm somewhere on phone.

Puzzles - 204 completed 2297 -> 2326. Highest was 2421. It seems like there are some times where you can just see/think things through and othertimes are just lost at every single puzzle. Not sure if it's some rungood/runbad of consecutive easy/hard puzzles, or more just being in a good, undistracted mindset.

Book - I was rough here, I started it a little was reading in bed before going to sleep, but I think it's something that almost need to be in front of a chess board to follow along with it instead of just reading it solo. Also not sure if it's a higher level, I had some trouble following along, but I'll keep giving it a shot.

I'll just stay consistent with goals this week-
20 Rapid games
200 puzzles
1/2 hour per night of the endgame book