My Chess Blog!

Hello! My name is Dave, I am 20 years old and I am from Mililani, Hawaii but I currently go to college at Grambling State University, majoring in Nursing. Anyways, this blog is going to be about my journey as a chess player. Boring, yes, and very cliched. But oh well! Here's some background about me as a chess player;

I learned how to play chess when I was in 5th grade, and joined a community chess club, and every Tuesday I would go to the rec center and play. I don't really remember anything about it, I wasn't terrible but I wasn't the greatest either. Anyways, when middle school and high school came around, I stopped playing chess except every so often when a chess board happened to be around. In the Summer of 2009, I went on a vacation to Canada, and the hotel I happened to stay in had a chess board in the lobby, so I started playing with guests. A little 12 year old boy came around, and destroyed me in every game we played. He happened to be a chess champion in Chicago for his age group. Anyways, at that point I decided to give up on chess forever.

Fast forward to present day. Just a normal college student, chillin'... I hadn't really played chess, or even thought about it for the past 3 years, when a friend walked up and asked me to join a chess tournament he was having. So I thought, sure why not? Sounds fun. There weren't any pro's there, just a bunch of people playing. Anyways, the first game I played in a long time, I won! I got lucky, and got a bye for the next round, and found myself in the semi finals, which I ended up losing. I brought my queen out super early, and was playing defensive the whole time even though I was white, and he ended up check mating me. 

So afterwards, I decided that I could've won that tournament. And from that day forward, I decided I'd start playing chess again. I downloaded the apps, fired up this old dormant account, and got playing. Right now, I'm terrible though. I've only won 1 game online out of like 12, and on my app I haven't even won, except from people who don't reply in the 2 day timeframe. -___- Hopefully I can get better! Anybody have any tips for me? Thanks!