chesster3145, Top Blogger: A second introduction

    Hello and welcome (again) to my blog! I already have an introductory post, but since there's more of you here now, I felt I should give a second one.

    Greetings everyone! First of all, I have a little secret to tell you: this is actually my second blog. About two years back when I was a lowly 1100 player, I tried to start up a blog. After a few posts, however, I quickly realized it was trash and deleted everything.

    Who am I? Well, that has to be kept a secret: after all, it is the Internet, and my chess identity is much more relevant and interesting. I'm a relatively new and semi-erratic 1550 player, having played seriously for just two and a half years. This game, my calling card of sorts, illustrates well where I'm at right now: a rapid win over an Expert where on the White side of a Pin Sicilian I grabbed the d6-square with both hands and never let go.

    This game illustrates a few things about me: At least right now, I'm better positionally than tactically, I play my best chess versus much stronger players, and my play doesn't seem to get much better in slower time controls. (In fact, I can often be subject to overthinking in slow games.) My losses, however, are often incredibly ugly, often happening when I manage to find the worst possible solution to a problem a few times in a row.

    Since my first introduction, blogging has really grown on me, in the same way writing inevitably grows on everyone once they begin to understand it. Over the last five months, this blog has helped me to release emotions, improve at chess and connect with a wonderful community which will never get drowned out by troll posts.  

    I write weekly about almost anything to do with chess here, with posts usually coming out on Saturdays. Whether it's an annotated game, opening theory, tactics, interesting positions or even improvement itself, there's plenty of good and fresh content here to look at. In particular, I would recommend the relatively recently finished Why Players Plateau series as my best work to date - a series that I felt was both unique and meant a lot to me personally.

    Thanks to some changes I implemented a couple of months ago, you can now find all of my posts in the blog directory and blog sidebar, updated immediately after the post comes out, and I'll be sure to make a habit of notifying you in my notes when a post is delayed.

    Thanks for stopping by and reading this intro! I plan to start work on Everything Openings immediately. It will be an ongoing series, released in blocks of 3-6 posts on Saturdays and Wednesdays whenever I have new material to share with you or when I'm between series and have little else to write about.

    chesster3145