What next
So, here I am, about a month after having rediscovered chess, firstly through Facebook MyChess, and then by discovering this site. It had been about 25 years since my last chess game.
I have about 50 tournament games started - with another 20 starting tomorrow.
My rating has increased to 1550-ish and I'm still winning the majority of games - I think I'm about 1600, just need the ratings to catch up as I finish games.
I've learnt a few things.
1) Endgames - this is not the time to slack - in the past I've lost too many games because I thought it was all over by the time you got to endgame.
2) Blunders - oh man I wish I could avoid these - I've learnt never ever to play without pressing the analysis button and play out a few moves. This simple trick seems to avoid most blunders. But I lost a game yesterday by not spotting a bishop and knight bearing down on my f3 square, embarassing to say the least
3) Openings - there are too many options. I would like to be less reliant on the explorer function but there are so many openings to learn that it might be a while yet. I think I've got the main ideas of the Sicilian, Ruy Lopez and Queens Gambit, but some peoples' "main ideas" are 10 move analysis - which is not what I mean.
So, not sure where to focus my efforts. Focusing on openings seems sensible and so I think I will do that for a while, maybe even starting a few tournaments to focus on specific openings.