r_heaivilin

    Formerly, an instinctive player, being just good enough to be ahead of the bell curve. I was undisciplined and unstudied.   Now thanks to Chess.com and  being asked to help coach an elementry school team, that has changed.  I have studied up bit. Raided the local used book stores, and even got a National Master, Eric Schiller to sign a copies of couple his books.   And get this, seeing the signature (such as he was able) got the children planning a trips to the county library to READ.   Also with email and a book order IM J. Silman (chess.com writer) graciously signed a copy of his How to Reassess your Chess, 4th edition.   Now if only the diagrams were labeled a1 through h8, I might be better able to understand it!   (suggestion for the 5th edition...  ironic really given that Silman is the pioneering champion of teaching for those to whom chess board and it's overlaying patterns of piece movement are  not intuative.

     I once played a 2400+ rate, 2nd place winner in a chinese national student amature, in 5-0 blitz.   And He  was able to reconstruct the game to show me how I missed winning  some 15 moves back!    Inspite of being young, multi-lingual, chess gifted (but untitled), good looking and having a total hot girl friend; he's actually really nice guy too.   While probally the best player I've lost too,  

    I have also lost in bliz to a several titled players.  A master convinced me abandon the Dragon until I mastered the lines better (memorization is not my style) and learn a more forgiving king side black opening (which was totally destroied by a NM in later a blitz game, and then again by 1900 ish player.