I Should Have Listened

I really should've listened.  But I didn't listen.  I don't make a habit of it.  Ask my wife.

I'm an adult improver that rediscovered the game in the spring of 2024.  I'd played a bit in middle school and knew how the pieces moved so I thought I'm no beginner.  When Chess.com asked me to estimate my Elo, I said, "Yeah, 1200.  Right?" 

Wrong.  Very wrong.  I make a habit of it.  Ask my wife.

I quickly normalized (plummeted? crashed? imploded? spiraled despairingly?) into the 500s but I stuck with it and before long broke 700.  I thought to myself, "If only I could learn an opening, I could really shoot my ranking up."   Sure I'd seen the posts that emphasize to focus on tactics.  I'd seen the videos that showed how to build good habits.  But I knew better.  I always do.  Ask my wife.

I picked up a few courses but many of them felt like they were way above my head.  The author would just assume that something was obvious but the choice of move made no sense to me.  I cancelled a lot of courses. I finally picked up Christoph Sielecki's "Keep it Simple for Black" and at least it felt attainable.  I set a goal of breaking 1000 by the end of 2025 and started learning and playing.  It helped, I guess.  I still blundered pieces.  Despite my memorization, I would get creamed in the middle game.  My Elo went up, but slowly.  I did not meet my goal.  This is not to say it was the course's fault.  It is quite good.  I simply just couldn't progress because of my mistakes. 

I finally hit 1000 in early 2025 and then the worst happened.  I plateaued.  My Elo didn't budge for almost a year.  I dropped 200 points back into the 800s and earned them back.  I couldn't go forward.  My Elo looked like an EKG of a heart attack.

I kept at it.  I'm stubborn as a mule.  Ask my wife.  

One thing I began to notice was that at the end of most trainable lines, Sielecki would point out a target on the board, or a plan of attack.  How he came up with them, I had no clue.  And that's when it dawned on me.  Even when I was playing well, my moves weren't coordinated.  Even when I was making good moves, they didn't have a purpose.  You can win chess games that way at a certain level.  

I started thinking about all the posts I'd read about learning the fundamentals of the game, learning to see tactics and making a plan.  I buried my pride and picked up Jeremy Silman's "The Amateur's Mind" presented by Andras Toth, a tactical course, on Chessable.  I often brag that I am the most humble man in the world, but this was difficult because it forced me to acknowledge I was, in fact, an amateur.

I set a goal of breaking 1400 in 2026.  And, while I'm only part way through the course, my Elo is up over 100 points in less than than month.  All of a sudden I can better evaluate positions.  The targets and plans of attack in the other courses make sense.  Those ideas that weren't obvious before... well they still aren't.  But if I work on it long enough I can maybe understand.  

I really should have listened and focused less on openings and more on strategy.  It's made a world of difference for me.  I am not perfect but I try to be.  Ask my Wife.

May all of you meet your goals in 2026

That is a very interesting and inspirational story! Thank you for sharing! I truly hope you meet your rating goal for 2026!