Patzer to Grandmaster -- more patzer than master.

Well big surprise. If you take a couple years away from the game you don't do as well. Big surprise. So, to refresh the new readers I was 1425 at the 95 percentile in April of 2021 and I suddenly decided 95 percentile was good enough and I quit. Didn't pick up a piece until, O I guess it's been almost three weeks.  And my rating has dropped below 1300.  Although I was pleased to get a message from Chess.com this week that they were giving me back some points, because of some fairplay issues of another opponent.  I like that. 

But I've got a couple games to present. First off, a loss, because of stupidity. Second a win, because my stupidity wasn't fatal. And then it had a nice little tactic at the end. 

The first game was against chesskinghah. He was ranked in the 1100's. When I saw that I thought I've got to win this one. But, no. 

And then the second game was against a player from Serbia, and as it turned out we had identical ratings of 1281 when we started the game. We had some pleasant conversation in the chat during the game. And I thought he had me down for the count early in the game. I was playing a Sicilian and he was popping me, but I survived and then I thrived. 

So, my training continues to be Chessable for the openings, Silman for the endings, Some lessons on Chess.com for the middle game, and then a fair share of tactics, play against the bots, analyze my games and then post my failures and... successes on the blog. 

How  are you all doing?