I wasted 10 years on chess!

As the decade is nearing the end, I look back to its beginning where I started to play chess on a semi-serious level. I liked up with some older guys at a local Starbucks to play a good deal starting 2010-11. They had tournament experience and were in the Class B and Class A range.

At first, I was playing below their level. Then, I started to play at around their level. At the same time, I started to play online. I improved somewhat, but I also realized that I needed to study hard to get to the master level... Yet, despite this realization, I kept going back to the old habits...

When I got this account, I decided to myself that I will take the time to study through the computer... Yet I went back to mostly playing and making the same mistakes. As a result, I play roughly at the same level as I did in the beginning of the decade.

The inevitable conclusion is that I wasted 10 years on chess!

Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, when I look back at to my life I would say that I mostly wasted the 2010s as well. So many recurring mistakes. In fact, in the real life it's probably safe to say that I have wasted 20 years. Certainly, there were factors outside of my control. External pressures were real. Yet, it's clear to me that my failures were primarily the result of me not rising to the challenges; not summoning enough drive and discipline and cracking under pressure.

Despite these pessimistic outcomes, I am not feeling down. The experience has a silver lining that it hardened me in more ways than one. I have a better understanding of both chess and life. Yes, I have many regrets but I cannot turn the clocks back. It is what it is.

Did you enjoy it??

Just move in a rapidly accelerating frame of reference, or drop one metre away from the event horizon. Hither and thither, with Born rigidity, our wonderful Minkowski space time prevails!

How wasted? Could you have become a concert pianist maybe, or a brilliant garden designer?  Don't forget all you do in life is use up your time until the grim reaper knocks. So not wasted time just an alternative.  Good luck with the rest of your life.

Or a couch

if that so, just try other things, maybe cooking, someday u can be a chef and own your food truck. chess? consider it as a hobby. for me, I play chess for fun so I don't bother books, chess engine and notation, I let alone my creativity to wonder my strength, weakness and still make the same mistake, but it was more fun like this

I guess I can respond to two people at once... Well, it's like one of those things - when you're doing it, you're enjoying it but then you have regrets later. I have enjoyed cigarettes and vodka but then I seriously (and perhaps irreparably) undermined my health. Playing football instead of studying at school, chasing gals - all good fun but then you realize that you were better off studying and applying your brain. When it comes to chess,  on a rare occasion I did play some relatively good games (like my last rapid game here from a year ago and another game from this year you'll see below)... Yet, there has been next to no real sustainable improvement and I regret having spent the time most inefficiently... 

I know for a fact that I could have become a much higher rated player than I am today if I had the patience and perseverance to study the game. I was studying some of the time - perhaps 5-10% of the time (and inconsistently at that) and playing 90+% of the time, making similar mistakes and barely improving. The 2010s were, indeed, an epic waste of time for me. But yeah, thank you, I do hope that I will learn from my mistakes going forward...

Sad if you've had no enjoyment!

or a pouch

or a touch

That way you could waste your money too.  Options are unlimited. 

Unless you meant coach class

Chess players' rhyming capability on display here.  Just walk away folks... 😂

Touche.

I empathise with you. All the same, your rating of 1650 is at around my lifetime goal.