My Journey Through Chess - Part 1
I'm going to say something up front: I've never made a good blog before, and I intend to do so now. But it took me a while to figure out what to write about. Should I write about openings? Tricks? Honestly, I'm not a great chess player. Then I noticed some top bloggers who have around the same rating as myself, which surprised the heck out of me. How could top bloggers have a low rating? Then I read their blogs, and now I understand. You don't have to write about complicated things. You just gotta make things interesting. So I'm going to do that for this blog.
Table of Contents
The first time I played chess was with my brother. He isn’t as good as I am, but he can hold his own. We were both beginners and had just learned how each piece moved. That first game isn’t on record, so I can’t include it here. After playing many fruitless games together, only learning a little, I decided to focus on online chess to improve my rating. So, I asked my mom, and she got me a ChessKid account. My rating there was relatively low, but I kept playing games and tried to grasp the basic checkmates and similar concepts.
After about six months on ChessKid, my life became more complicated, and I had to step away from the digital 64-square board for a while. It wasn’t until January 2024 that I joined my school’s chess club and got back into the game. That was also when I created a Chess.com account. I had now officially started my journey through the world of chess.
On Chess.com, the ratings were way more accurate. But that didn't matter, since after losing to a few 400-elo players, my rating dropped to a rock-hard 100. I was stuck there for a long time, playing games and winning and losing periodically, never making rating progress., only gaining rating points by beating my friends with the Scholar's Mate. Then, one fateful day in a bookstore changed my life in the chess world forever.
It was just an ordinary bookstore. I was there multiple times, aimlessly wandering the shelves of books, looking for something worth reading, something worth buying. After 30 minutes of doing exactly that, I thought: "Hey, what about chess books?" That was one of the best ideas I ever had.
I ran over and found the chess books. Looking amongst the shelves, I found only books that were old and contained difficult puzzles and tactics; not made for me. As I was just about to move away in disappointment, I saw it: Levy Rozman's "How to Win at Chess":
That book certainly intrigued me, so I picked it up and started reading. After an hour, my mom said we had to go, and I replied, “Why? This book has to be the best I’ve ever read!” Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money to buy it. Luckily, I could borrow a copy from the public library, for which I’m grateful they had it available.
“How to Win at Chess” taught me everything I needed to know: basic checkmates, tactical patterns, and a lot of opening tricks and traps. Older books usually had everything in algebraic notation, which was hard for me to understand then. However, this one included easy-to-follow diagrams that made visualizing positions so much simpler.
Now, this is not an advertisement; I can guarantee that. This is just my personal opinion of the book. Some people say it wasn’t made for them or that it’s bad, but I respectfully disagree. This book helped me climb out of the 100-elo dumps and into the 400-elo decent range. I owe so much to Rozman for writing it.
My first tournament, I would say, wasn't bad. I actually placed 2nd. The thing is, though, that I was playing in a 6-person swiss, instead of a quad. The experience was very enriching, and it got me accustomed to how to behave in a tournament. As for the games? Well, they were displayed in an earlier blog, but I'll delve into some depth here:
Round 1
1-point bye. Yay for me! You might wonder, "Starflight, if you were playing with 5 other people, wouldn't you get a matchup?" The answer is, no, because the group was originally 5 people (including me) and it wasn't until 2nd round that they moved a kid from the 100-elo section into the unrated section where I was playing.
Round 2
Well... alright. Some of you higher-rated players may think that this is probably the stupidest thing you've ever seen, but again, this is the unrated section and that is where either the noobs or the gods will fry you on the board reside. At least I won. Mentally, I felt really good about my chances... until the next game.
Round 3
Now, remember what I said earlier. This guy was one of those chess gods who fry you on the board. And how ironic, he beat me with the Fried Liver Attack. After losing this one, my final score was 2/3, where my opponent had won all his games and scored 3/3. Grand Prize? USD 60. Runner up got USD 15, which was mailed to me.
This tournament left me wondering: Could I win some more tournaments for cash? I thought so, but my next tournament wasn't the best. But we can go into that another time. For now, I spent many hours thinking how I could improve.
(Note: All games say my rating was 100 since I did not have an official rating yet)
“Starflight, why cut the blog off so early?” Well, I kinda wanted to make a comprehensive series about my chess journey, so splitting it into parts would make it easier. Plus, I’m outta time for this blog anyway. Looking back at this, I really haven’t gotten that far with my journey, but I know soon that it will be something to remember.
I’d be happy to see some feedback. Why not? Clearly I have methods to improve. My ultimate goal for this is to become a great blog writer (or a writer in general) and a great chess player. So I would appreciate it.
I hope you enjoyed reading about the first part of my journey through the beautiful and genius game of chess. And who knows? Maybe my writing will inspire some other low-rated players to rise out of the depths and raise their ratings, and document it like me. That’s my biggest wish.
Stay tuned for more!
