Introduction: It's ON - 2700 challenge ACCEPTED!

Hello Dear Reader & Welcome to my chess blog!

For those who don't know me - my name is Ritvars & please let me tell you in twenty-four words my chess journey so far. (you can see more details in my profile description)

When I was 15, got my first FIDE rating 2185. Fast forward, ten years later (2016) - my rating is pretty much the same - 2199. 

With this pace of progress I won't reach the FM title until the end of my life no matter how healthy I lived! So I am no chess prodigy nor the next Magnus Carlsen, but more like the average Joe, who loves the game, plays some online blitz, occasionally takes part in tournaments and sadly makes very little progress in terms of chess quality. (Please write in comments if you can relate to this state of things! )

Now let me reveal you WHY you should continue reading this...

One week ago, I played the occasional classical chess tournament here in Copenhagen. It was a rainy autumn week, however, the tournament turned out to be the best one I have ever played so far and I scored my first IM norm!! (I will share my games and tell you more about this tournament soon)

No, this is not the reason I decided to start this blog, although it did make me feel as if I had accomplished something serious and it certainly did make me ponder on it for the following week. And I realized, this is my chance to take some serious action and leave my mark on the chess world.

So here it goes: I have decided to set myself a challenge to reach a 2700 rating and document my journey so that everybody interested in chess could see what exactly does it take for an average Joe to become somebody in the sophisticated chess world today.

No, I do not plan to turn into a pro chess player, so my personal goals for this journey are following:

1) Obviously, reach the goal & document the journey so that others can try it themselves

2) Add value to the chess community

3) Promote chess beyond the current chess community

4) Travel the world & form new friendships & perhaps partnerships

5) Look at chess through a fun lens and have loads of fun the whole way down!!

You are essential to this journey because...

This is a challenge and for sure I will be experiencing both ups and downs on the way and I am not an I-know-it-all kind of guy, so I will very much appreciate your advice, feedback and perhaps critics all the way through.  

Documentation

I will setup up a YouTube channel (details coming soon), where I will publish videos covering analysis of my games, some online blitz sessions and other chess related entertaining material. And then there will obviously be regular blog entries here on chess.com. What do you guys think about Twitch? Please let me know if there are other tools that would make it more entertaining for you guys to follow my journey.  

Thank you for reading this post & stay tuned for the updates to come soon!

Cheers,

Ritvars