My chess trainer made me change all my openings!? Part II
Hello! Stacia here and I'm going to continue my story about how I changed all my openings per my chess trainers (yes, I technically feel I have two). Part one was basically a story at how I came to this crazy, dubious decision which you can read HERE. And now we continue with the adventure....
A Bold New Years Resolution
It was January 1st, 2019 when took the plunge into King pawn. As other people were giving up carbs and sweets for the new year, I gave up 1. d4 committing to delete it from my nutritional chess menu for the full year. Now is actually April of 2020, so that commitment ended 3 months ago. If you are looking to enjoy a miracle story about how switching to 1. e4 caused me to gain 300 more rating points, well you may want to click out now because that's not what this story is.
This story is a quest and it is not without challenges and flat out failures. Although I am someone who is looking to increase my rating; my real goal is to get actually better at chess and increase my chess understanding. If you do that, a rating increases will come. And if you want to improve as I do, I highly recommend you aim to do the same.
Success is not a straight line
So let's talk about this concept. Learning over performance? How dare I, but success is not a straight line, as the subheading suggests. It never has been and it never will be.
There's a quote I heard once that i really like.
"A master has failed more times
than the beginner has ever tried."
-Stephen McCranie
The truth is, that if you want to get good at chess, or anything for that matter, you have got to be ready to lose, you've got to be ready to be humble, embrace a learning spirit and learn from the unpleasant process of sticking your nose deep into your own mistakes. It's only human to be discouraged at times, but I believe what separates the successful from the stagnant in the long run is not the number of wins you had last weekend, but how you respond to the losses, & especially the bad ones and especially the slumps, because guess what? There will be losses and there will be slumps.
So that was a nice prelude to the next part of the story wasn't it?
The rise and fall of Stacia Melinda
Now I'll be honest and say I was really hesitant to put this out in public. I was actually honored to be featured on the Perpetual Chess Podcast as an adult improver success story, by Ben Johnson, and many people reached out to tell me they were inspired by my story . They still do over a year later! But since I'm being honest, I'll tell you I had mixed feelings about that even then because to me my rapid rise and in rating felt a little superficial. I had gained 300 some rating points in a few months and yet I was staring at my games going, "Wow, I didn't play that well. Seems like my opponents just messed up more? Did I just get lucky?"
So basically I played normal chess moves and collected some rating... quite a bit of rating. And what you find is that rating is often like that. But really the rating gain, although it seemed to come quickly, was really the result of work i had done for the past three years. And so I feel that's what I'm doing now. I'm doing the work now, so that another wave of rating gain will rapidly "appear" at some point. down the road. Will this work? I think so, but I'm still on this journey so time will tell! But okay, what happened so far?
My Early Days of 1. e4
When I first switched to 1. e4 I was pretty hopeful. I started off playing some blitz games, getting a feel for it and analyzing those blitz games, and I found that even when I didn't rely heavily on my opening preparation I could still play chess a little bit and grab some wins. Easy peasy! So my belief that this change would cause me to lose rating actually dissipated pretty quickly! But it wasn't long before my "lack of foundation" caught up to me.
I especially love how many blunders I committed this game. When you feel lost and you don't understand the position, you are more likely to blunder. I know from experience (now)! So much for playing like a 1700!
Once I lost some painful games, especially right in the opening like the above game, for example, I began to feel very vulnerable. That is not a feeling that you want in any competitive sport because it won't serve you very well and I've heard even super GM's call it going on tilt. Well, guess what? I went tilt... not for one tournament, but for several months and to be honest I actually fell back down from my prized 1791 USCF rating, all the way down to my rating floor of 1500 USCF, flat on my face, where I laid for weeks, battered and broken.
From Inspiration to Disappointment?
So let's talk about that for a second because internally I knew that this was OK; that I would get those rating points back and then some in the long run. Or at least I hoped. I knew that it would probably take at least a year for me to play 1. e4 halfway decent also, and although internally I was shaken, but sorta OK with this development because I truly do believe in the process.
But the same time I also felt like a complete hypocrite. Just months earlier people were saying they listened to me on my podcast and that I inspired them because I reached 1791 so quickly despite being age 40 and learning chess so late in my life, and at the same time I was now sitting at 1500... so everything I accomplished to the outside world was now gone, if they only check my rating graph on the USCF website.
When people notice this would they feel I was now the opposite of an inspiration? Was I exactly what you shouldn't do if you want to improve? Was I now becoming a poster child for disappointment? Not fun questions to have pestering me in my mind....
Next I'll be sharing just what openings I took on and why, and the next legs of the journey. It didn't stop at my first move with the white pieces. And I think it might surprise you! I hope you enjoy. 
To be continued.... in Part III
Hope you enjoy and learn something!
-Stacia
Check out my entire Attacking Chess video series.
Please like, subscribe and comment on my Chess Channel on YouTube!
Follow me on my chess Twitter:
https://twitter.com/StaciaMelinda
