A 2025 Daily Chess Championship Round 1 Elimination Journey

Today, we delve into the intriguing world of the 2025 Daily Chess Championship through my eyes: https://www.chess.com/member/akhandbharatvanshi","data-hook":"WebLink","target":"_blank";}" href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1016051749567960694/8791175002980550694#" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal;">​​M S (akhandbharatvanshi) - Chess Profile - http://Chess.com","data-hook":"WebLink","target":"_blank"}" href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1016051749567960694/8791175002980550694#" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal;">Chess.com. I've played more than 35 thousand games (I know but the real joke is my ratings), mostly in bullet so it makes sense to be rated around 1700 there and around 1600 for blitz and rapid. Thanks to a successfully predicted outcome for an Inter-Collegiate Chess Championship, I was awarded a http://Chess.com","data-hook":"WebLink","target":"_blank"}" href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1016051749567960694/8791175002980550694#" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal;">Chess.com Diamond Membership for 6 months, which I have been using to review my games. I primarily hope for an AI rating that surpasses at least 2000 and an accuracy for each stage of at least 90%. The key word here is hope or hopium as the internet likes to call it nowadays. On top of that, I have taken pride in beating all thehttp://theChess.com","data-hook":"WebLink","target":"_blank"}" href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1016051749567960694/8791175002980550694#" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal;"> http://Chess.com","data-hook":"WebLink","target":"_blank"}" href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1016051749567960694/8791175002980550694#" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal;">Chess.com bots leading to a 2300 rating and I recall one AI game review rating of 2450. The pride comes primarily from the fact that I have never read chess books, never seriously followed chess commentary, nor have had the will to competitively learn chess in a methodical manner. Now it's debatable whether that's a matter worthy of pride or not but if the statistics are to be believed then I can comfortably call myself a casual player without offending Disrespect Speedruns of Dr. Hikaru too much. While knowing that even highly rated players including highly rated bots can play a badly rated game, whenever we think of a win against them, we think of the win against their player rating as opposed to the particular game's rating.

Now I followed the Chess renaissance especially for India last year and thought let me be more serious and enrolled in this competition. I placed 3rd in Round 1 with 16.5 points with 2nd and 1st place having 18.5 and 20 points respectively. My general idea was to play different openings, so I'd not get confused between the games as if I were a blindfolded Magnus who was playing 20 people at once. I won't name any openings as a result because they were all incidental never intended and needless to say I don't know them. The full scope of unpreparedness for what I imagine to be every other casual player like me competing with serious players is demonstrated below through key turning points in some of my more exciting games:

My final thoughts, even if tautological, are that preparation is definitely necessary, and a methodical undertaking would undoubtedly be beneficial. If you are a serious casual player like me trying to discover the height of chess without preparation, I suggest abandon the casualness or abandon the seriousness, you can't live in both worlds at the same time. If you are casual, you probably never started reading this much less got this far and if you are serious, you are probably improving your game, so this is for the serious casual players out there... PICK A LANE and have fun! I am picking the serious lane for some time - kudos to your journey!