bas_dijkstra revisits chess

After a couple of years of not playing chess (pretty much not at all), I'm quite excited to start playing, learning and improving my chess game once more, so it's time to pick things up.

This is where I'm starting from:

Puzzles: 1816

Rapid: 946

Daily: 945

Blitz: 1039

I'm going to try and put in the daily work to get these numbers up, and will post updates every week on Wednesday. I'm also looking at joining a local, OTB chess club again, although I've not decided on that yet.

Nice, keep us updated on your progress!

Thanks, Jesse! At 44 years old, I'm quite curious to see how hard this is going to be.

Week 1 done. Even though I haven't had a lot of time to spend on studying and playing, I did a little bit every day, and I really, really, really enjoyed the process and feeling of getting back into the game. I'll probably do week 1 of the study plan for another week and will report back in 7 days.

Won a couple of rapid games, lost a couple, but learned a lot from analysis in the process, which I hope will pay off in time. I'm especially looking forward to my work schedule clearing up in a week or two, which means more time for chess.

Puzzles: 1845 (+29)

Rapid: 922 (-24)

Daily: 945

Blitz: 1039

Good job on week one. It's nice to see your journey starting well!

Same situation. I played on interschool chess tournament and it motivated me so much (even though I didn't win 6 games out of 7, but 4 were great, 1 lost on time and 3 bad ones with mistakes). I hadn't played for a year and half and my ratings are similar.

Week 2 done, too. As I said, I chose to do another week of rapid chess instead of Blitz, plus lots of puzzles. Will try some Blitz games in the week to come, plus more daily games, puzzles and analysis.

I'm happy to see my accuracy is slowly going up, even though it's still early days of course. Still thoroughly enjoying the process of getting back into the game.

Puzzles: 2011 (+166)

Rapid: 991 (+69)

Daily: 997 (+52)

Blitz: 1039 (0)

I think better not to play blitz. 15+10 is a minimum.
I want to ask here Smarterchess, is worth going to 25+10 now? I'm a 1000 played (once 1200) who returned to chess after 2 years of not playing and loses 70-80% of his games in middlegame. When I was 1200 I played I was playing 30+20 and I want to return to slower games

Yeah, I think I agree. I played a couple of Blitz games this week, because the study plan suggested it, but I don't like it so far. I made too many mistakes simply because there's no time to see through a position.

Better to take a little more time in the games I play so I'm moving back to Rapid 15|10 for now.

Also, slower games are a much better fit both for the way my brain works and for what I want to get out of chess (thinking, analysis, contemplation, getting a break from an intense job in IT).

Not the best week in terms of chess, mostly because my mind was working on too many other things. I did spend quite a bit of time watching the FIDE matches between Ding and Gukesh, though, very nice. Also, I've learned I need to take my time. In puzzles, in games, everywhere. So, I decided I'm not doing Blitz for a while and stick to Rapid and daily games (and puzzles and analysis).

Puzzles: 1985 (- 26)

Rapid: 921 (- 70)

Daily: 1013 (+16)

Blitz: 860 (- 179)

I want to play 40 games (12 remaining) and then switch to 25+10 (from 15+10). Before it I want to analyse my matches and find my weknesses. After another 40 or 80 matches I would like to switch to 45+45 or 60+0. Do you think it's a good idea? And concetrate on puzzles (at least 50 per day - 35 on topic that I'm focusing on -forks for now and 15 general). And play at least one game every day.

Hard to say if that's a good idea. What works for me at the moment is just spending time on the board when I can. Some days that's an hour, some days it's a little more, some days it's much less.

Another very mediocre week unfortunately. End of the year with everything that goes with it both in my job and at home throws massive spanners in the works most days. However, I still played some games and did many puzzles.

Also, once more as a reminder to myself: Take. Your. <REDACTED>. Time.

I make lots of blunders, in puzzles, in games, simply because I don't consider the options or the impact of my moves deeply enough. That'll be the focus for the next couple of weeks. I won't be posting updates until January 8 or so as we're travelling, but I will keep playing when and where I can.

EDIT: it seems like the puzzles on the mobile app (which I use most of the time) don't impact the puzzle score on here... Or am I missing something?

Puzzles: 1962 (- 23)

Rapid: 868 (- 55) <-- this really bugs me

Daily: 1070 (+57) <-- this is making me happy, though

Blitz: 860 (0)

A glowstick has a brighter future than you.

Hi @bas_dijkstra, how it's going? I have rating of 1070 now. I win most of my games 31-4-24 W-D-L and when I looked at my accuracy by game phase (and accuracy of multiple 1800 players and one 1250 player) I came to result that my real rating is somewhere around 1300.
I have a plan how to reach 1800 next year, I can share it with you.

Meh

I had a couple of weeks off around the holidays, still played my daily games but not much else. Looking forward to picking up the studying again next week.