#1 - Road to 2400: - My Chess Odyssey♟

I'd like to start right at the beginning, where and when it all began. If I remember correctly, I must have been around 6 years old when I first encountered chess. My father is a FIDE Master in chess, but it so happened that I only came into contact with the game in the first grade of elementary school, as part of a recreational activity. Since I didn't know the pieces or the rules, I mostly just goofed around during the sessions. However, thanks to our instructor, Ferenc Frink, I got hooked on it. Building towers with the pieces was quickly replaced by the thrill of delivering a checkmate, and as a result, Ferenc strongly recommended to my father that it would be worth getting me more involved in chess. That's when it all began.

In that same year, I participated in the regional (county) youth championships, where the winner qualified for the national finals. In the first year, I recall finishing somewhere in the middle. However, starting from the next year, I won every time I entered. Perhaps about nine times in a row. All of this without conceding a single half-point to my opponents over those 9 years. In the early years, my father and Ferenc were my coaches and guided my preparations.

I believe I was around 10 years old when Ferenc indicated to my father that he felt I had outgrown him, and it was time to move up a level. To this day, I look back on that moment with great joy and pride. I think it's a very special thing when a coach can see that. Our work with Ferenc ended at this point, but our close friendship lasted a lifetime.

I continued my training with Grandmaster Győző Forintos, whose professional achievements I won't list here, simply because it would be shorter to list what he didn't achieve in his lifetime. Under his guidance, I learned the fundamentals of positional play and gained a lot of insight into the psychology of chess. As a result of our collaboration, I won the Hungarian Youth Rapid Championship and the European Rapid Championship at the age of 12. Around that time, I made my debut in the Hungarian Team Championship, the highest division in Hungarian team chess.

Around the age of 14-15, I felt that my progress had stagnated, and I wasn't advancing at the pace I wanted or what was expected of me. This was partly because the amount of invested work in chess was steadily increasing, while I was at an age when the world was opening up. Competitive chess began to come with a lot of sacrifices, which, combined with the pressure to perform, made me tense and frustrated. At this point, I turned away from chess for shorter or longer periods and sought joy in other areas of life.

Of course, I couldn't and didn't want to let go of my love for chess, but I wanted to pursue competitive chess at my own pace. So, I began to selectively choose my tournaments, my training methods, essentially managing my own chess career. This is how I came to work with Grandmaster Miklós Galyas, whom I asked to be my coach. This decision was one of the best I ever made. Fortunately, Miklós accepted the role, with the condition that we set clear goals, and his coaching would end once those goals were achieved. He had learned from previous experience that it wasn't ideal when the coach-student relationship turned into a close friendship. Our goal was to achieve the FIDE Master title, and at that time, my rating was around 2100. These were the most productive years of my competitive career. My work with Miklós primarily focused on my openings and stabilizing my gameplay. It went so well that during this time, I hardly lost any serious games. I started to build serious playing strength, and the results followed. After two years of work, at the age of 18, I won my first international master round-robin tournament (First Saturday, IM) with 6 points out of 9, which pushed me over the 2300 rating threshold and earned me the FIDE Master title. Our collaboration ended according to our agreement at this point.

In the following years, after achieving the master title, I played chess for fun without any pressure, but due to the lack of the right coach and motivation, my progress stagnated. I say this even though at that time, I reached the highest rating of my career. At that point, I had essentially taken up chess as a hobby and only participated in the national team championship and local blitz and rapid tournaments. Alongside this, I was teaching children and preparing them for competitions.

Years went by, and then the COVID címe. The whole world was shocked by the realization that what they had considered a stable and secure part of their lives might not be so. Something in me switched at that moment, and I felt that it would be a great loss if I didn't take my profession, which I was good at and which I enjoyed, to its peak. I didn't want to regret not pushing my limits and discovering what more I had in me. Because I felt that as a chess player, there was a lot more in me, and I was capable of more than what I had achieved so far. So, with financial and emotional security in place, I started getting more actively involved in chess again, which culminated in 2023. I'm now dedicating more hours every day to studying chess, competing again, and I was fortunate to ask Miklós to guide my work, help me with preparations to achieve my intermediate goal, the 2400 rating. This is where I am now, the goal is crystal clear, and it became the namesake of this blog series. "Road to 2400," where I want to give you insight into the part of my life that serves this goal. There will be content on competition, preparation, learning methodologies, but also on chess psychology, balanced nutrition, and the importance of physical fitness, and more. I hope that you, dear readers, will find as much joy in my blog as I do in writing it, and I trust that, apart from being entertaining, it will also provide useful advice, thought-provoking ideas, and keep you engaged!

Let the "#roadto2400" begin!