chesscrave1

Note written in 2013:

I became a diamond member here in order to take advantage of the wealth of expert chess knowledge provided through the video lessons put together by GMs and IMs (Daniel Rensch is my favorite!). My goal is to improve my game by listening to IMs and GMs think, practicing tactics, and going through chess mentor problems.

After I first learned how to play chess (at the age of 16) from reading a few introductory books, and using Chessmaster for some additional training, I abandoned formal study of the game, and only played chess online and against computers for several years until I found chess.com. I was pleasantly surprised to find so many chess learning tools in one place. I am super grateful to chess.com for helping me improve my game by at least 50% over the past year. I am bit too old and busy to make chess as much as a focus as I'd like to, but am hoping to continue growing as a chess player and chess addict! 

My main goal is to become a better player, and to develop a deeper understanding of positional concepts, and to expand my opening repertoire. My current new goal in chess is to slowly master blindfold chess. I am currently working on basic visualization training, in addition to playing blindfold chess against a weak computer engine. I believe that playing blindfold chess will bring my game to a whole new level. One day, I would like to be able to play full games in my head without losing track of where the pieces are. Currently my short-term memory is the main limitation in blindfold. I tend to forget where my pieces are and my opponents pieces are after several captures, and this is very problematic. But that's all part of the learning curve. By the end of 2013, I would like to be at least half my full-sighted strength in blindfold chess--perhaps that's too ambitious, but I will strive to make it a reality!