Start Where You Are

About 5 years ago, I came back to chess again. After a transition in my life I found a renewed passion for chess in 2018. I wanted to teach my daughter the game but also I had long wanted to get better. You can find more of my story here and here.

This is what 5 years of chess improvement looks like:
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I’ve broken this into two parts, A and B.

Let’s start with Part A. What I did back then was consume Dan Heisman'sYoutube Channeland his book "The Improving Chess Thinker." I also found the Chess Steps Methodwhich I intended to use to teach my kid. Only I found in the Steps Method the regimented teaching approach I had never had before. I hired my first coach in 2019. We had 4 lessons between Nov 2019-Jan 2020. Lastly, I found Ben Johnson’s podcastand felt like I had found a community of chess players again.

During that time the absolute game changer for me was Step 2 Thinking Ahead. I cannot recommend it enough. It is the only product I know that helps students develop visualization. More than anything I attribute my growth in part A to that book.

As you know, in 2020 the pandemic hit and things went crazy for awhile and I stepped away from chess for a bit. I stopped playing for about 10 months. (My Chess.comaccount shows a gap between Feb 2020 and November 2020). A lot of things had changed and not for the better. In the midst of the pandemic, I was pretty down as many of us were. Like a lot of people what jolted me back to chess was Netflix’s Queen’s Gambit. After watching that, I became committed to getting better and getting a USCF rating.

So 2 years ago in early 2021, I got serious. I hired a new coach and started playing slow games weekly with opening prep. We would analyze the games afterwards and he gave me weekly Steps Homework. I had Chessable.com courses to study, tactics to solve, and meaningful games to play and I grew as a player. This virtuous cycle started Feb 2021 and finished Jul 2022 (Part B on the chart above).

During this time I played in my first OTB tournament and came in 2nd! The consistent work was paying off. But during that time however I developed big gap between the complexity of the tactics I could solve and my ability to spot them in games. Maddening. Still I got an official USCF rating of 1613

It’s crazy to me to see this 5 year period wrapped up in a single chart. As of March 1 2023 I’ve improved my rating by 557 points Chess.com with all that work. Quick math tells me that’s 100+ points per year. Every 100 points gained on the Glicko scale can be equated with being twice as good. Ratings are just stats and some people just love stats, however I do not. They’re just useful to me as a marker of performance over time.

What this makes me feel however is hopeful. I can tell you what it’s felt like is frustration, disappointment, and having to gut check my commitment to chess after every defeat. I know I’m not alone there. Seeing the progress over time however tells me that chess is hard, but we do get better if we work at it.
Improvement at chess is like almost anything else, we just need to start where we are. There’s no point in feeling bad about wherever that is because it’s all part of the journey.

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In this blog I intend to share my work and progress for other adult improvers at chess. Each month I’ll share some stats (games played, accuracy of play) as well as what work I’m doing, maybe even a few book reviews. Hope you can join me and share in the journey. If you like, subscribe on Substack

Next up: What I learned