I am 45 years old. I learned chess as a freshman in High School and by my sophomore year, I was board 2 on my High School team. I was board 1 in my junior and senior years. I have won my share of OTB tournaments and lost some miserable games.

I had not played OTB for many years, and recently returned to OTB. I am trying to achieve the goal of USCF master.

I was unixadmin on ICC, and had a ton of 1 minute games and 3 minute games (in the thousands). I joined chess.com to learn openings and get practice for OTB games. I am not into ratings, as I have been thoroughly destroyed by lower rated players here and OTB. I am into learning and the fun of chess. Chess.com is essentially the vehicle that allows me to memorize openings, and to help my tactics and positional training. For those who don't think you should memorize openings, try OTB chess!

I plan to play in the FIDE Amateur world championship soon. I will post my results on chess.com.

After a few OTB tournaments, I am shocked to see how many young players are excelling at chess. I have a USCF rating floor of 1600, but in all of my recent OTB tournaments, I played 1700+ players that ranged from 8 (yes eight) to 10 years old. This blows me away! Computers must have allowed these youngsters to excel. Computers, or gene mutation! Whatever the case, I still hope to achieve a USCF master rating. I will post my journey on my blog.

I would appreciate your comments on my game. That will only help me improve. I usually only play team and tournament games, but I will venture out at times. If I am preparing for an OTB tournament, I try to reduce the number of games that I play on chess.com.