My first blog
This is my first blog post so I will give some background on my chess life, how I use chess.com, and post two games.
I have played chess since I was a kid (I am currently in my late 20s), with various degrees of seriousness and success. I played in kids tournaments until I was 12, and was considered to have good potential. But I stopped playing and lost interest. I then started playing again for a local club when I was 17, and continued playing throughout university in local England county leagues.
I then started a job as an IT Consultant in London, and didn't really play over the board chess. I did play online, but for fun, not trying to improve.
About a year ago I started playing more online, and using the materials on Chess.com to try to improve. This continued, and I decided to enter an over the board tournament. This was the Bury St Edmunds Congress, which is where I grew up, and the tournament director ran the chess club that I was a member of.
Unfortunately I lost all four games that I played, which was a bit disappointing. However the reason was quite obvious, my calculation was not up to scratch, and I was making blunders. I felt this was easy to fix, and used Tactics trainer to practise calculation.
Since that tournament I have played five other long play tournaments, and other club games (I joined a Dulwich chess club in London). My most recent tournament was the Reykjavik Open (a great excuse for a holiday), and my next tournament is the Central London Open 24th - 26th April. My FIDE grade is 1863, and my English grade is 149.
What will this blog contain? Annotated recent games of mine, updates and thoughts on my aim to improve at chess, and updates on tournaments that I am playing in. Why am I doing this blog? To provide a story to my chess journey, to get feedback on how I am doing, and to encourage me to annotate my games :).
My current training program for improvement is to try to do 30 minutes of tactics trainer a day, play two standard games, and spend 45 minutes studying either positional or endgame books (more on this in a future blog). I also play some online chess and read/watch random articles/videos. I have an ambition to get my FIDE grade above 2000.
Now for the games!
My next over the board game is on Monday in the London league, so I will hopefully post that one.
