The road to FM

Hi, my name is Maarten and i'm writing this blog mostly to become better at chess, infact im training to become an FM. To start off i'll tell you something about myself first.

I'm a 26 year old guy that lives in a place called Middelburg in the Netherlands. I learned the game when I was about 6 years old. My father who was a psychiatrist back then always wanted to become a Grandmaster but sadly didnt have enought time to study chess beside his job. I quickly lost interest in the game and didnt play again till i was 15 years of age. At that moment is started playing huge amounts of 1 minute bullet games on a site called instantchess where I reached a peak rating of 2250. I soon lost interest in the game again and started living the life of sex, drugs and rock n roll. 

About 1.5 years ago my father took me on a trip to Benidorm where there was a chesstournament, he insisted that I should participate, so I did. With a FIDE rating of 0 I started the tournament, which for me was nothing more then a break of drinking huge amounts of alcohol at the bar in the hotel. I ended the tournament with 3/9 points and suddenly got addicted to chess and improving as much as I could. 

My rating went from a solid 0 to 1904 in 1 and a half year, and I expect it to reach 2000 by the end of this year when I will play in Benidorm again. 

Sadly the times of sex, drugs and rock n roll are no longer here since I developed a panickdisorder 6 months ago. I'm slowly recovering from it in my mothers place in Spain right now where I just joined the local chess club.

I played 2 games against a certain Antonio who has a rating of 1860.