Dan Heisman And My Rating

My chess career began with joining this website on June 30. I'd read a Fred Reinfeld book and that was my training before starting to play. Some early success encouraged me to continue playing but the negative was I got concerned about my rating. Eventually I started playing only unrated games to protect my rating. And that was tied in to playing players whose rating was less than mine. So I kept on winning. But eventually the words of Dan Heisman got through to me. To paraphrase Dan, it's necessary to play better players who will punish my mistakes and not let me have a cheap victory.

So my goal now is to play higher ranked players whenever possible. That doesn't mean not ever playing lower ranked players, as there's a need to learn how to actually win a game from a winning position, but doing both seems like a reasonable plan. Of course playing better players means that my rating is likely to suffer. That's inevitable but it's one of the most effective means to ultimately becoming a better chess player.

Any similar stories out there?

learning the hard way, the best way to learn.