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Alright, it seems that I should change my bio. Welcome to my profile everyone, I'm damianterminating, an intermediate chess player looking for improvement and fun playing chess, also enjoying every single game I play, no matter what. You probably clicked on my profile for a few things:

Who's damianterminating?
Is damianterminating legit? (not a bot)
You friended me and you wanna know more about more! (probably)

There are more reasons but I'll keep some of them in that list. Anyways, Imma introduce myself.

Who am I

As I typed at the start of my bio, my user is damianterminating. Some people would think my real name is Damian but actually it's not my real name! But, why wouldn't I choose my real name? Obviously: security reasons.

Anyways, talking about me: I'm a 14 year old mexican guy that started playing chess when I was 12 years old, I firstly didn't understand a thing and my ELO was below 300 (on another account). I didn't really know that I could get to a point where I'd be improving quickly, hitting my 1000 ELO milestone in less than 1 year (i thought it would take more ). Once I hit that milestone, I've started thinking about me getting HUGER ELOS like 1500 or 2000, also dreaming about me getting a chess title, but of course it's not gonna be easy. Now, why is my profile using America flag instead of the Mexico flag? Well, I thought it'll be fun to use another flag for a while, why not?

But wait, how did I know about chess? Was it just curiousity? Did I randomly get a Levy video on my fyp? Actually, it all starts when I was a little kid, around 6 years old. I was chilling as always, playing some zombie games on my old phone, after a big session of playing videogames I was starting to get extremely bored, so my curiousity decided to see what was my brother and my grandma doing, they were playing chess! I wanted to learn how to play because it seemed to be really fun! After my brother game ended, he taught me some stuff about chess, back in that time, I was doing all possible illegal moves you could imagine, it was such a funny thing! For example, moving the knight LITERALLY in a "L-shaped way".

Back in that time, I didn't even know how to move pieces, haha!

After a few lessons from my brother and my grandma, I was finally moving pieces normally, vanishing most of my illegal moves like in a Thanos snap. I improved, and I started to get hooked up to the game. Firstly, I was LOSING every single game I played, even 100 ELO players could beat me back in that time. I definitely HATED to loose, so I tried to improve by playing games and just learning the most basic things such as pieces' values, not illegal moves, castling correctly, etc. And that's all I learned, I was just struggling to do good moves, half of my moves were all below "good". After a year of not knowing a thing because I left chess for a while, I was looking for games on my phone and I found chess apps! As my first option, chess.com app. I was challengingly beating 400 ELO players but I was getting destroyed by the rest. I didn't like to play against online people, so I decided to hop on bots, and I liked the change! I was doing 1-hour sessions of playing with my favorite bots and that helped me a lot, letting me beat some begginer bots and a month or two later, being able to beat Emir! My first Intermediate level bot.

And now, me. Beating 1600-1800 ELO bots like an average game, an "as always" game. If someone's reading this:

NEVER GIVE UP.

What tools do I use for improving / learn openings

OK, this section might just mention 1 tool because I'm not really someone that dedicates his whole life to chess to improve (and doing it would be challenging ngl) BUT I kinda use 1 website where I learn some openings I play like Scotch Opening, learning 30+ different variations of that opening, such as Classical, Main Line and Schmidt variations, tho I forgot some lines, but learning openings is not just memorizing and play as far as you know, but it's about understanding the opening and its lines.

This is Scotch Opening's main structure, it starts with 1. e4, e5 2. Nf3, Nc6 3. d4

The website I'm currently using for openings' study is... Chessly!

"Chessly is an educational chess platform founded by Levy Rozman, also known as GothamChess. It aims to make learning chess simple and fun through video lessons and interactive exercises." (NOT SPONSOR OK)

And why do I use Chessly as my top resource to learn about chess? Just because? Because it's founded by Levy? No. The main reason I got Chessly as my top resource, it's because I found the "Opening Courses", which they'll let you watch a video about a few variation, get a special section to learn those variations, then review each variation by playing the moves on the lines and have fun! Also, they got free trials so that's why I decided to pick Chessly. And yeah, I'm broke, I can't really afford any books with information about specific openings like all sicilian types or ruy lopez variations, not even a Chessable course.

How good am I

This is a normal section I'll just fill with normal games where I came out with incredible brilliants (probably OBVIOUS brilliants) even if I created this account like a couple weeks ago. Let's take a look at some messy positions I got during my games and I'll transpose the positions into puzzles if you're willing to solve or find the good moves I made in those positions, feeling like Witty_Alien!!!

1st Position

In this position, I was playing a bullet game agaisnt a 1265 ELO spanish player (SwimmingWalrus), where I "found" a move that I thought it was a mistake because, uhm, I actually PREMOVED it...

Anyways, talking about the position, I played this incredible brilliant in the opening stage. My opponent wanted to attack my queen, trying to make some trouble on my position to make me curl into a ball and feel closed and lost, but I... well... premoved a capture and believe me or not, the engine said it was a HUGE brilliant move, a triple exclamation mark move!!!

In the real game, I missed the opportunity because I was all blindfolded by premoving and feeling "fast". In the puzzle you might've noticed a weakness, and if the light-squared bishop has the opportunity to check the king, the knight on f6 would easily block it with no problem, like, your opponent won't block with the queen, or will they? It doesn't matter at all because the answer is too obvious. Good luck solving the puzzle, find a way to win material.

If you ACTUALLY solved the puzzle and you're not scrolling down through my profile to check the results, then congratulations, after playing Bxf6!! But why is it valid? Was Stockfish making me feel like I played a brilliant move so then I don't feel bad after hanging my queen for the goods? Of course not, anyways, that move was FIREE.

damianterminating vs SwimmingWalrus

2nd Position

Let's get into more FIREE examples!

In this position, I was playing another bullet game agaisnt a 1378 ELO finnish player (vmiet), this one was a DISASTROUS game because we were playing so bad, tho I managed to get a brilliant attack followed up by a missed opportunity of me.

Excuse me?

The position starts up when I try to sacrifice a bishop to get control of the e8-square to attack my opponent's vulnerable king, I clearly had a better move and I didn't use enough neurons to think about it and I went for the "playing with fire" way, my opponent took the bishop, probably the move that everyone would've played, but my intentions of attacking were clear. Before I tell you the solution or you again scrolling down through my bio, solve this puzzle to understand my position. Not to flex but I played both sacrifices in 3 seconds.

In the actual game, on move 34 I did NOT see the queen guarding the e8-square, which I saw it and I thought that my whole idea was lost, but my opponent was too sad after seeing their defeat and they forgot about his queen, allowing me to win by checkmate! What a chaotic game!

damianterminating vs vmiet