Duckfest Digest 01 Background and Beginnings

Introduction

This blog will be my medium to share my ideas and my experience. it might help others on their journey, but mainly because I enjoy writing about it. Over the past months I have spent a lot of time on my chess, with the explicit goal of improving my game and to increase my understanding of the game.

 I’ve seen many people ask questions on the forum on how to improve, or what to study, or posts like ‘why am I not improving?’. Popular answers to these questions include, but are not limited to: study tactics, develop your pieces, learn basic opening principles, take time to evaluate the position before you play, scan for ‘checks, captures and attacks’, think about your opponents next move, make a plan, study endgames, etc. Resources on these topics are freely available everywhere, often created by very knowledgeable players. Everything you could hope for as a chess player is available. 

Yet, I missed something. With so much to learn, so much to study, so much to practice, I had a lot of questions that I could not really find an answer to. 

• Where should I start?
• What should be my priorities?
• What does studying even mean? 
  • What should I do, for how long and when am I done?
• Should I make a plan?
• What’s the best way to measure my progress?
• Should I focus on ‘studying’ first?
•  or should I just play games and use that experience to identify weaknesses and go from there?

This blog will not address these questions specifically. To some of these questions, I still don’t know the answer. But it does provide some idea of what I’ll be writing about. My articles will be about my journey and how I chose to work on my improvement. I'll share some of my challenges along the way, what I did and my experiences. It will contain recommendations on what you should do to improve your chess and, equally important, my failed experiments might prevent you from wasting your time on the same.

About me

I’ve always considered myself to be perfectly placed on the dividing line between casual and active players. Roughly speaking I could beat every casual player I’ve met, everyone that played occasionally, everyone that had not spent time on chess in any serious capacity. Against active chess players, club players or anyone with some serious chess playing ability, I would always lose. This is of course a massive simplification, but as a general principle it kind of worked. I could predict my winning chances pretty accurately: to any person I could say: "I am better at chess" and I would be right. Unless their response was: "I don't think so", then it would be the other way around. I’d definitely lose.

In more quantitative terms, let’s say I’ve been a 1200.

I’ve played since I was 7 years old and was a pretty decent player for my age. I never pursued chess in a serious way however. I played a few tournaments in high school as the worst player on the team. In college I played some casual games with friends.

Now 20 years later, after the Netflix hit series The Queen’s Gambit and after discovering the joy of chess engines, an abundance of other chess content being available and the amazing video content being provided by YouTubers and streamers, I’m back. Fully motivated to work on my chess and totally overwhelmed by the task that lays ahead of me.

Getting started

The stage is set. I am an adequate casual player, yet I crumble in the face of real opposition. A lot to learn but a reasonably solid foundation to build upon. Since I was taught chess at a young age and switched to casual soon after, my opening knowledge was nothing more than the first few moves of the Italian opening and some ideas of opening principles. That's it. And I soon found out the meta had changed quite a bit.

I realized that the timing seemed perfect for a complete overhaul of my opening repertoire. After stumbling on a video by Eric Rosen, I decided to play the London. Even though I had never heard of it before, the case was compelling. A decision I have never regretted. As black, also inspired by a YouTube video, I chose the Pirc defense. A decision that made me miserable every single game. I quickly switched to playing the Caro-Kann.

My first game

It's difficult to have a start of your journey that's more depressing than mine. First game, fourth move. I have played my first blunder.

Well, I guess the only way is up