My journey of Chess

Hi! I am a 16 year old chess player who is looking forward to become a future Chess master, I am aiming for my CM title before college, which is 2 years away. Back to the topic of explaining my own journey of chess. I started playing chess 3 years ago, my parents did not know much about the game so it was myself who found out the game at the age of 13 on my Macbook, when I was curious about the horse shaped app on the "others" folder.  When I opened the app, I didn't know how the pieces moved, I quickly learned the rules by playing with the computers, and gradually learned how the game worked and was really interested into the game. Thats when I decided to really dig into the game and play it competitively, and I had created my account on chess.com when I had started playing as a 400. After failing countless times, thats when my first tilt happened, it was around the rating of 600 in the summer of 2022, I decided to take a long break and come back to the game in the fall of 2023. When school started, even though there wasn't a chess club or anything related to chess in school, I made new friends and introduced the game to them, and many of them were interested it as well. Thats when we decided to go on a speedrun to see who's rating would climb the fastest. I started out to climb my rating to 1200, which I felt like I was playing extremely well. But thats when I met one of the strongest chess players in my school, and he was around 1400 on chess.com. I trained with him and tried to beat him but I would always lose. I was losing my confidence in chess, but looking back at the efforts I had put in, I decided to keep going. I stayed at 1200 for a while, thats when my friends effortlessly reached 1400, who was previously worse than me at chess, I just felt like really quitting this game. However, a tournament in the end of the 2023 year had saved me from doing that, after almost winning the tournament and beating the previously mentioned "strongest" chess player of our school, I felt like I was back in the game. However, the graduation of Middle school was coming, everyone was busy with the tests. I managed to give myself free time and grinded chess while everyone was doing their homework. This is the moment, when almost everyone I knew had quit the game, because they felt like reaching 1400 was good, but I didn't, I felt like I needed to reach a higher rating, like 1500 or 1800 or something, because I was previously introduced to the gothamchess and Chessvibes youtube channels, which had gave me an insight into what the masters really look like in this game, as well as new strategies of this game that I knew I had to practice on to get better. After graduation from middle school, I kept practicing puzzles and constantly watched chess videos on how to improve. After 2 months of grinding, by late August when High school started, I was already near the 1800s, and I was impressed by my improvement. I told my friend, who had quit chess months ago, that I was gonna reach 2000 and my ultimate goal is to become a high ranking Chess master. They actually believed it and encouraged me to continue. The first months of high School did not go well for me, which had forced me to quit chess for a while. When I came back, it was already in November. Another opportunity, which I had met this amazing chess player named Jacoby B from Maine(USERNAME: GM_Katsu), we played one game and he beat me pretty badly, although I was much higher rated than him. I was a bit suspicious of him and thought he probably cheated, but then I found out his rating was climbing rapidly, thats when I knew he was just a better player than me. This is the moment when the competition over the rating climb thing happened again, this is the second time because my friends from school had already quit competiting with me in terms of chess rating climbing. Jacoby was the first player to reach the 2000s, and I followed by reaching 2000 in February of 2024, and that when became stuck there for more than 13 months. Here is the interesting part, when I reached 2000, I couldn't find any area to improve anymore. To make matters even worse, I had played blitz and bullet, because I tried to bring these ratings also the 2000s, but I tilted so badly my rating had dropped by 300 points, to the level of a 1200. Thats when I closed my account and decided to quit this game. I had asked the chess.com staff team to reopen the account multiple times, but after countless times of tilts and going back and fourth on the rating, I decided I had enough and closed my account permanently, it was last year in April. In this one year, I decided to focus other things in life, such as practicing calculus so I can get ready for the AP, as well as painting and drawing things I like. A year passed quickly, and by 2025, another opportunity had gotten me back to chess. It was a local chess tournament, that I can won the first place, because I had perviously joined the Chess club so my college applications will look better to colleges. This success contributed me to go back to the chess grind. After suffering losses for almost a month, I was able to learn my lessons and get my level back to the 2000s, I found out, after taking this long break, I had cleaned up my negative emotions and was always ready to play chess everyday, rather than focusing on the rating. This is the moment when I had worked my way to the 2200s in chess, finally breaking that spell that had hindered me from advancing any further from the 2000s. And here is all of my journey through chess for the past 3 years.

Thank you for reading!