Welcome to my blog! First of all, let me acknowledge that MIRACLES HAPPEN!!! I AM ALL CAUGHT UP ON MY TOURNAMENT REPORTS!!! 🥳🥳🥳 That means the next time I write about a tournament on my blog, it will be about my most recent tournament! ...
Welcome to my blog! The quest continues to officially be "caught up" on my blog. At the time of this writing, I'm two tournaments behind, and when I publish this, I'll be one tournament behind. So where did we leave off? Ahh y...
My blog is back! So last you've heard from me (I guess unless you're one of my IRL friends or something), I posted about how hard tournament chess is. From being crushed by an IM, having to stalemate a 1600, grind out a 1400, and choke the final r...
Welcome to my blog! Back to tournament recaps, as I've been playing a bunch over the summer. So it's important that I don't fall behind! Nothing hurts more than running into someone at a tournament, and they say "nice blog", and I'm behind by 3-4...
Hi, everyone! Today's post will be a little different than the usual game analysis... because I'm trash when I play, and I don't want my hundreds of readers to have to witness the horrifying incidents that occur when I sit down to play! ...
Welcome back to my blog! As I indicated last post, my tournament hiatus is over, and I intend to keep it that way... (for now). Last post, I had played two local tournaments, scoring a total of 5 wins, 0 losses, and 3 draws, and increasing my rati...
Welcome to my blog, and to the three month anniversary (plus some days) of me not posting! I assume that my blog just naturally dies and goes extinct without anyone noticing... but... I realized that's not the case as I entered a tournament today,...
Welcome to my blog! In case you're new, I participated in the 2023 Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship, where my college team (Baylor) gets to play other schools around the nation. The post is designed not only to go through the games...
Sometimes, I try to reflect on my chess growth. Where I was years ago vs. where I am right now. As you can see from the caption, the guy on the left was a naive 14-year old playing their childhood friend in a scholastic tournament at a local libra...
Hi friends! Welcome back to my blog. As I've been preparing for Pan Ams, I played some rapid to try and get some warmup. Yes, playing 10|0 to train for a 90|30 tournament is a genius idea, right? Anywhoo, when I was playing, I experienced several ...
Hi everyone, and welcome back to my blog! I am excited to be back, and I missed you all! I appreciate the questions and concerns about my blog, where I've been, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have a concrete answer. Other than that I was busy (no ki...
If you don't know about the chess cheating scandal going on... then... uhhh... there's a freaking Wikipedia article about it... which means it's a pretty big deal. I was hoping that this post I wrote would be the last and only time I'd mak...
Before you click here, you might read this and realize, "Wait, is Daniel just trying to promote his Youtube channel?". To which I answer "yes," so you don't have to click here if you don't want to! So what's up with my stupid ...
Howdy, chess friends! Time for AMA! AMA stands for "ask me anything"... and it's just that! Submit any questions you have for me (can be about how to improve at chess, my chess story, games, my opinion on c...
So there was some drama today Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup. It is extremely rare for a player to withdraw from a closed round-robin top-level event like that. The only reason this happens in recent times is due to health reaso...
Hello, chess friends! This weekend, I participated in a chess tournament. It's pretty significant because it was my first chess tournament in over three months. This does beg the question, why wasn't I in the tournament scene all summer? The defau...
"Club-level player" is always a term I struggled with. It seems like an arbitrary skill level we designate for players who know what their doing over the chess board, but also they're not considered "advanced" players... especially in a tournament...
Hi, chess friends! Well, time to brag about myself. No, the title is not clickbait, today, on Monday, July 11th, 2022 AD, I scored 2.5/3 (two wins, one draw, zero losses) against titled players (one NM who I rematched, and a CM). ...
Hi, chess friends! Today, I will continue my series on breaking down a puzzle that I solved, and how I ultimately came to the solution. My goal is for this to be instructive content for my readers as to how to approach tactical positions, which ca...
Hi, friends! In 2019, I started a series where I dedicated a whole post to analyzing a puzzle from Chess.com. The point is to explain my thought process to getting the puzzle right, and hopefully, this will be helpful for readers to understand tac...
Hi chess lovers! Have you ever played a brilliant move in a game? I've had beginners tell me they have yet to play a brilliant move. However, I believe if you do some digging, you've probably played a brilliant move at some point or another. From ...
Hi, chess friends! It's been a little while, and I want to update my readers on what's going on in my little world. First of all, I am excited to announce that my friend and I are launching a chess podcast!! We named it Chess B...
Alrighty guys! So where are we? I just finished Pan Ams... which was January 9th, this tournament was played on March 12th, so I had a two month gap in between tournaments. And, I'm writing this on May 9th, which means I'm very behind on tournamen...
Hi friends. It's been over six months since I last did this! But it's that time again. In case you are unfamiliar, AMA stands for "ask me anything", and this is an invitation to do... well, just that! Feel f...
WELCOME!!!!! OK, an energetic introduction for absolutely no reason. Day three of Pan Ams was not fun. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I started a series in which I made a non-binding agreement...
