Beginner. My rating today 1-14- 2021 after 7 1/2 months I finally reached over 900 (902). I am certain that I won't be able to maintain this highest standing I have achieved thus far. I may even regress back to the 500's. Hopefully, lingering or regressing to the five hundreds until I get my "groove" back won't have to happen anymore. I must say that it seemed like I was never going to improve. It's a slow process. Pattern recognition of certain moves and learning to recognize positions of the pieces that can lead to promising tactics is a large factor. It takes time to learn patterns. Another factor that has led me to improvement is the ability to checkmate your opponent. If you do not know 50 ways to checkmate then you won't learn the methods and tactics that lead to a checkmate. With knowledge of checkmate methods you will know or learn to know how to move your pieces around the board. Until then, you cannot discern your weaknesses and where you could or should be moving your pieces. Usually I will not accept draws when I am offered one. I am on a learning curve and it is more important to me to learn from my games and play them out. However, at this point I have played enough games that when I find myself losing, I may choose to resign to save time and look for a new game for more practice and attempt more quality. At some point however I wish to learn tactics and patterns that lead to a stalemate or draw especially when I am being outplayed or blundered. In that case instead of resigning I will purposely continue playing in the hopes of forcing a draw or stalemate. For now I haven't tried much to force a stalemate or draw when I'm losing... I want however, to learn to do it and survive a losing game. Makes sense right?

You can expect me to make blunders. Just saying... I've gotten better but I still mess up a lot. Be a good sport and do not abort the game just because I'm rated lower than you... I may learn something from you and will appreciate it... Thanks

April 10, 2021 As of my last entry on January 14, 2021, I have not been able to repeat a 900 ELO rating. I discovered however that consistent and regular practice doing puzzles everyday provides your mind with the conditioning it needs to improve your discernment of tactics. I feel that my chess is improving and have played some amazing moves and some amazing chess games. My rating seems to be more stable and I do not fluctuate as dramatically as before. It looks like I am more or less an 800 player for now. Hopefully I won't ever drop back to the 500's like I was doing before. In two months it will be a year that I started playing chess for real. I knew how to play the game but I wasn't a chess player before that. I am addicted now and feel that I will be playing chess for the rest of my life. It is therapy because it consumes your mind and blocks out everything else that is going on in your life. It is entertainment and exercises your brain in a way that changes your outlook on life. I feel smarter about everything. Life is a chess game. If you practice chess you become better at life.

August 28, 2022... I've scored the highest elo thus far for myself. 949 that is. I started playing over the board games at a local chess school I recently found. But I believe that the reason I improved is because I focused on memorizing a couple of gambit systems. Funny though, one has never occurred for me and the other is not much of a gambit system that leaves you with a significant advantage. However, due to the tactics involved in those gambits it has made me more open to tactics that I wasn't seeing before. Nonetheless I seem to be holding myself at the high 800 to 900 levels. I guess my next goal after making it to the 900 level is to break 1000. It's been a very difficult year and a half of learning how to play chess. I'm amazed at how stagnate I can get or fall back and then stay low for weeks and weeks before I start doing well again. My next post will hopefully be to report that I broke past 1000. It's now November 4, 2022. I haven't reached the 1000 level but I'm reaching the 900's more often and staying there longer and longer. The reason I am writing today is because for the first time I successfully executed Eric Rosen's classic sequence of moves for the Stafford Gambit. Been trying to get it to play out for months. It was so much fun to finally do it. My opponent played right into it just like Eric teaches it. 9-12-2022 my highest rating so far. 982 I'm so close to hitting 1000. I guess the thing that is helping me the most compared to before is that I am able to come up with tactics that I couldn't see when I was at a lower elo. Nonetheless I find myself plummeting at times and drop back into the low 800's. I am happy that when that happens that I am able to come back up and get right back into the 900's. I am beating players rated over 1000 and am in the hopes that soon I will get past that threshold.

12-13-2022 Wow Wow Wow. Guess what? I made it to 1000 just now. 1001 to be exact. It's been a long road. It's been over 2 years and 8 months. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but hey, I'm improving and humbled at how difficult it is to be good at chess. Somehow without knowing much about theory I am managing to out-maneuver my opponents. It's magical. Somehow I know more about what to do and not do. I see more than I used to. Strangely, the games do not seem more difficult than when I was rated in the 500's. The fight remains just as challenging.

Stretchsportguy