Moves, Mistakes, and Memories. My Chess Biography

Hello, welcome to another blog!

A few posts ago, I said that I would still write an article about my ‘chess biography’. Today is the day to fulfil that promise! However, I don’t intend to share every detail of my personal life. Instead, I want to mention some significant events related to this beautiful game and its stages in my existence that have shaped who I am, for better or worse.

My inspiration mainly comes from the text written by my dear friend @VOB96:

• Beyond The Board: An Ongoing Journey Through My Life

I would also like to mention @Alina_Bakhtina_24 and her brilliant post:

• My Chess World: Behind And Beyond The Board, although I had already had the idea by the time she posted.

So, how will it work? The article was divided into seven different sections, which I believe represent the main phases. Each one usually starts and finishes with an event that marks its borders. How did I view chess during that period? What positive or negative emotions/feelings did it evoke?

I hope this will become clearer once I stop talking and start the text itself. So, let's set our time machine back to 1999 and begin our journey!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction to chess - 5 years old

2. Early Competitiveness - 6 to 13 years old

3. Teenage years - 13 to 16 years old

4. The shock and depression - 16 to 17 years old

5. Away from the board - 18 to 24 years old

6. My comeback - 25 to 32 years old

7. Today and future projections

8. Conclusion

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1. Introduction to chess - 5 years old

I don't know the exact date, but I was introduced to chess in July 1999. I vaguely remember it being a freezing cold day. Yes, it gets cold in Brazil, and July is our winter. I was lying on the sofa under about five blankets, watching the first Pokémon film for the 68th time.

My dad, ‘watching’ with me, and probably bored as hell, asked:

Leticia, would you like to play something?

I was already smart enough to realize that I could watch the film whenever I wanted, so I agreed. Then Dad taught me this strange game called chess. It was an odd thing played on a small plastic board with tiny pieces. Oh, and I was freezing while learning it.

But somehow, I really enjoyed it. He taught me the basics, which I found fun and interesting given my curious nature. Nevertheless, in my mind, it was just something random that my dad had invented, or perhaps a Sobczak family tradition. I still had no idea that it was so ancient and complex. Did I mention that I was freezing the whole time?

Anyway, at that period, chess was just a fun game that my dad would let me beat him at (yes, I could notice). I especially liked solving some of the puzzles he made up. Below is an example. Can you find the best sequence?

I wouldn't be able to remember from memory, and obviously, we didn't use to register our moves. However, after talking to my dad this week, he tried to recreate one of our games. It is not exact, but it gives you an idea of what they used to be like.

And so, my life went on for the next seven months until I started elementary school and discovered that one of the extracurricular activities I could choose was... chess!

Why is this little thing invented by my dad taught at school?

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2. Early Competitiveness - 6 to 13 years old

As you should know, I chose two extracurricular activities: chess and judo. Chess because I thought I would be the only one to know the rules and become the best in the class. Judo because the sensei was nice to me during the trial week. Although they are intertwined, let's focus on chess.

Of course, once the new teacher started to explain the game’s history, I finally realized that it had not been invented in my family. My reaction was:

I was competitive from a young age, and practicing these sports made me even more so, sparking a real desire to be the best. I would always get very angry with myself after a blunder, sometimes even conceding defeat before my opponent had moved. Normally, they probably wouldn’t notice, but I felt like it wasn't worth continuing to play.

My teacher had to explain patiently that they were part of the game, and that I could still win because my friends were just as dumb as me. I imagine she used kind words.

Many people say that playing chess helps martial artists with concentration and focus. I won't deny that there is some logic to this, and I agree with it to an extent.

However, for me, it was the opposite at this age. I couldn't express the frustration I felt in chess because it's such a calm game, so I would vent it in an exaggerated way on the mat. You wouldn't want to fight Leticia after she had suffered a pathetic defeat on the board. What's worse, I was good at judo.

It was also during those ages that I joined my first tournament, where I had the stupid idea of entering the open section [1]. I finished third, which was a good performance, especially for someone wearing a ridiculous frog costume and who used to steal rooks from the teacher to win [2].

In summary, that was the period of my life when I saw chess as pure competition, even when not official. I played to win and prove that I was smart. Losing would hurt my ego. It was no longer a fun game; it was something I had to be good at. Not healthy for a child, but that's life, and it made some difference in the future. Read on.

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3. Teenage years - 13 to 16 years old

Oh, adolescence! What a strange time. I know many of my readers are still in that phase, so for now, just trust me. I'd love to say that I was different from most people at that age, but that wouldn't be true. You can therefore imagine how puberty affected the way I perceived chess.

The explosion of hormones can make us think and act impulsively, sometimes foolishly. Naturally, my first romantic interests began to emerge. I don't know how things work in 2025, but back then, liking chess was a surefire way to be bullied for being a nerdy loser.

My most natural thoughts were things like:

What would that cute boy want with a weird girl who plays chess? No! I'm a true athlete! A judoka! Not a nerd!

And God forbid I mention chess in front of my female friends! I'd be excluded from the 'cool people' club immediately and relegated to the shadows with the insignificant ones who sat at the front and (behold!) asked the teacher questions!

So, you might be thinking that I just stopped playing, but it's worse than that. If that were the case, I would at least be honest.

Actually, I still liked chess but played it in secret. The internet wasn't huge in 2006, but I often challenged the Windows engine when I was home alone. Of course, no one could know. Not even my parents. It felt like my alter ego was having a guilty pleasure. I’d hear the room door opening, slam the laptop shut, and pretend I was doing homework.

On the one hand, I lost that unhealthy competitiveness, so my personal relationship with chess improved. This happened mainly because teenagers 'don't care about sh*'. Strangely, I didn’t lose this fire for judo. Maybe hormones explain it, too.

On the other hand, though, chess was like that boyfriend we're embarrassed to tell our friends about.

Thinking about the game made me feel very ambivalent. I still loved it, but I hated loving it. I was hiding chess from everyone else, but really, I was just hiding it from myself.

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4. The shock and depression - 16 to 17 years old

However, people mature, and their minds slowly develop. In my case, this happened towards the end of 2009, when I realized it was silly to hide my love of chess from my friends.

When I told them that, it felt like confessing a dark, forbidden secret I had carried for years. My best friend Maria's reaction was something bombastic like:

OK...

So, yeah, the heavy weight of spending approximately four years pretending I didn't like it was lifted from my shoulders in half a second.

I returned to the chess club and played in small tournaments around, sometimes challenging my dad again. He was surprised that I hadn’t gotten rusty after all those years when he thought I wasn’t playing.

The bad news is that playing against humans brought back some of that unhealthy competitiveness, although better controlled this time. 2010 was probably the year in which I played the most OTB games in my life. But, just in case you are wondering, I never had any professional aspirations, not even the slightest.

But that's when fate dealt me the worst blow I have ever experienced. At the end of 2010, I received the terrible news that my mother had passed away while on a business trip.

I don't want this blog to focus on that, but it would be both incomplete and dishonest to omit this episode from an autobiography. It was a huge shock. During the anger phase of grief, one of my reactions was to smash and break a chessboard on which my father had been analyzing a position.

For those who are curious, he told me years later that it was this one:

Back to the text... Wow, losing my mom really messed with my head at the time. She didn't even like chess, but I remembered her story of when she beat my father [3], so seeing a chessboard or piece always reminded me of that and made me cry inside.

Everything, simply everything, stopped making sense. I could no longer enjoy playing. In fact, I couldn’t enjoy anything for two months.

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5. Away from the board - 18 to 24 years old

The following years were understandably very challenging. Although I had recovered from the initial shock, I struggled with depression and required professional help. Complicating matters further, 2011 was also the year I moved to Curitiba and started university.

A new city, new responsibilities, new friends, a new place to study, and everything having to live alone, far away from my family for the first time. As you can imagine, this was not an easy time at all.

There is not much to say about chess in this section. At that time in my life, I was studying and competing in many judo tournaments around Brazil, South America, and sometimes even around the world.

The funny thing is that the competitions affected my studies, and my studies affected my performances. I tried to juggle the plates but ended up dropping and breaking them both.

Perhaps the main problem is that, when I was 19 or 20, I could not decide whether to pursue a professional career in martial arts or get a diploma and pursue something more stable.

Years went by without thinking much about chess. This time, I obviously didn't need to hide from my friends the fact that I knew how to play, but I had absolutely no desire to improve, watch games, or simply play for fun.

The only notable episode is the one I wrote about in my post 'My Most Hated Not-So-Famous Players', in which a friend challenged me to try to achieve a knight and bishop checkmate against him, and I totally failed to do so.

My father would also sometimes talk to me about it, usually in relation to professional competitions that he used to follow. However, I only responded out of respect for his passion and to keep the conversation longer, rather than out of genuine interest.

Please don’t get me wrong; I didn’t start hating chess, I just became almost indifferent to it. Fortunately, the story wasn’t over, but just waiting for a spark.

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6. My comeback - 25 to 32 years old

The problem of choosing between working with judo or something more stable was solved when I became a sensei for children. This allowed me to combine my passion with a job that is not dependent on results or prize money, giving me more time for hobbies. Chess was not on this list, but that was about to change.

It happened in July 2019, which means it may have been exactly 20 years since I learned to play chess, but I cannot confirm this. While visiting my family in Erechim, I didn't have much to do, so I was just watching YouTube videos.

Suddenly, the algorithm recommended the following video from Xadrez Brasil to me. At the time, the channel was still relatively small and not too popular.

Seeing that it was about Henrique Mecking (Mequinho) immediately caught my attention because I had one of his books at home. Watching it was pure happy nostalgia; I felt as though I loved chess again, like magic.

It wasn't a gradual process. On that same day, I challenged my father to a game, watched some more videos, and asked if he had any books that I could borrow. All of a sudden, this became my new hobby.

At first, I played a lot against the computer because I was indeed rusty this time. Then I discovered Chess.com’s rival platform and Chess.com itself. In fact, I would even say that I became addicted to chess in 2019 and 2020. This time, by passion, not ego.

Apart from that, it also gave me the opportunity to continue teaching my students during the difficult pandemic times. Since judo classes were suspended, I introduced them to chess! First online, and then in person again when the situation improved slightly, although not enough for physical contact.

This experience made me love the game even more because I was not only enjoying it but also teaching the next generation to share this passion. If you would like to find out more about the influence of chess on them, you can read some brief stories by clicking on the image below:

During that period, chess evolved from a forgotten pastime to perhaps my main hobby today. But what about the future?

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7. Today and future projections

Now that we have covered everything, the natural question arises: How do I envisage my chess journey going forward? Do I have any rating aspirations? Do I want to play in tournaments? I would like to dedicate this final section to answering these questions.

Firstly, I don’t know exactly where this path will lead. However, I can say that, for the first time, I feel as though I’m playing chess purely for the love of the game.

It’s no longer a competitive obsession, a hidden burden, a wound, or an addiction. Nowadays, chess is what it should really be: an occasional hobby that I enjoy without stressing myself out. In fact, it relieves the stress of everyday life.

I do want to continue learning and improving, but in a natural and enjoyable way. I don't plan to achieve a specific rating. I think I'm at a good enough level for casual games, and that's what matters to me.

Regarding OTB tournaments, I may try to participate in some, as I have never played in anything that gives a FIDE rating before. However, I’ve never felt the need to do so. If I play, it will be more to gain a new experience and find out what it is like.

Finally, one thing I know for sure is that my children will definitely learn to play chess. I plan to teach them the same way my father taught me, in a light-hearted way, without putting any pressure on them to excel at it.

But how good am I as a chess teacher? The last thing I would like to show you is a game between my best friend, Maria, whom I have mentioned before, and my other friend, Victoria, or simply Vicky. A few years ago, I ran an intensive one-week chess course for them both. The final test was for them to play each other. Check it out!

As you could see, I'd better stick to being a judo teacher, because it was a complete disaster! But the important thing is that we all had fun!

And the coolest part is that the same people I hid my love of chess from as a teenager now enjoy it too and play with me. Maybe that's what I really aspire to in my future with chess. I want to influence more people to join our community and discover this wonderful game.

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8. Conclusion

If you are still here, thank you very much for reading my biography! I hope you enjoyed it and that you will be part of my future chapters by reading my blog, playing, and interacting with me.

This is certainly another positive aspect of chess in my life. I have made many friends online who I would never have met otherwise. A special thanks to @VOB96 for inviting me to join the blogging community, one of the kindest groups you will find here!

After all, perhaps that has always been the essence of my chess journey. Not ratings or trophies, but connection. First with my dad, then with my friends, then with new people I met, and now with anyone else I can convince to play.

We will meet again soon! Take care, and if you feel inspired to write a similar post, I'd love to read your chess biography, too!