My Chess Story

I’m an adult improver in my upper 30s, a business owner, and a father of two children working hard to improve my game. I’m currently in the 1500-1600 rating band in the Dojo Training Program. I’m starting this blog to track my chess training plans and progress. I hope that it will someday benefit other adult improvers as well.

I learned chess at a young age and played casually with my friends and brothers growing up. I remember reading at least one introductory book on chess when I was young, though I doubt that I finished it. I never played any tournaments and I never put in serious effort to improve, though I was often able to beat my friends. As an adult, I continued to play casual games occasionally when I had the chance though sometimes years would pass between games. Then in late 2019, I played some of my work colleagues in chess and most of them beat me! Being a competitive person, I figured it might be worth putting some effort into improving my game. My chance came when I was sick in bed for a couple of days around Christmas that year. I logged into chess.com and started playing rapid games, and I quickly became hooked.

I played chess online pretty much every week during 2020. My original goal was to achieve a rapid rating of 1500 on chess.com, as that seemed to be a pretty big milestone for a relative beginner. I found some basic instructional content online, but for the most part, I had no study plan and just played games and analyzed them with the chess.com “review” feature after each game. For me, like many, improvement came fast and easy at first.

Then in the second half of 2020, I discovered blitz. I don’t remember why I started playing blitz, but it was addicting and for some months I played blitz (and then bullet) almost exclusively. I do think playing all these speed games helped me to become familiar with many different openings, but apart from that I don’t think it helped me become a better chess player.

I didn’t know much about studying tactics back in 2020. I did some puzzles on chess.com but that was about all. I decided to get some books and after doing a bit of research online, I chose Jeff Coakley’s “Winning Chess Strategies for Kids” and “Winning Chess Exercises for Kids.” I was aware that Jeff had two other puzzle books that were supposed to be easier than “Winning Chess Exercises for Kids,” but in all my wisdom I decided I didn’t need “easy” books and could immediately go to the more challenging stuff. I completed the “Strategies” book within several months and found it extremely useful. I started working on the “Exercises” book in late 2000 or early 2021 and completed probably about 40% of it by April 2021.

It was in April 2021 that I contacted Dan Heisman to inquire about lessons. I had come across his website and found it useful, so I decided lessons might be a good idea. My biggest takeaways from Dan were 1) I needed to be playing chess with slower time controls, and 2) I needed to master basic tactical patterns. I took his recommendation to start with Bain’s “Chess Tactics for Students” even though it was much easier than the “Winning Chess Exercises” book I had been working on. As I went through the Bain book several times, I started to recognize the value of quickly recognizing basic tactical patterns. The purpose isn’t primarily to execute those tactical patterns in games (though when the opportunity to do so comes it is great!), but more so to help make sure that a candidate move is “safe” before playing it (i.e. making sure that my opponents can’t execute a tactic against me).

I took about five lessons with Dan over the next couple of months, but when my first child was born in the summer of 202,1 I dropped chess study completely for the next six months. Having children is great, but not conducive to chess improvement!

I happened to be in Dubai during the 2021 World Championship match between Carlsen and Nepo, and I was able to attend 2-3 of the games in person (including the famous game 6!). This rekindled my interest in chess and I picked up lessons with Dan again in December 2021.

2022 was the first year that I dedicated myself to chess improvement in terms of having a structured plan and staying consistent throughout the entire year. I had pretty much exhausted all of my “newbie gains” in 2020 and 2021, so improvement at this point started to feel like hard work. I mostly followed the “Four Homeworks” structure recommended by Dan, including going through basic tactical sets that he refers to as the “Dvoretky set” (more on exact resources in another post). I played around 120 “classical” games online (mostly 30|30), as well as played in my first-ever OTB (rapid) tournament. I tried to stay away from online blitz/bullet, though sometimes I would binge. I took lessons every 2-4 weeks with Dan. I also found the Chess Dojo Training Program and joined out of general interest in what they were doing, though I was pretty committed to sticking with the approach and resources that Dan recommends (the approach is quite similar, but the recommended resources are a bit different). I did see the value of the Chess Dojo community though, and started getting ideas on how to tweak my training program.

I played my first OTB tournament with “classical” time controls in January 2023 which was a great experience. I then took another extended break from chess study from February to September, this time due to the birth of my second child (as well as moving). I was able to work in only a few games and lessons during this period, and I didn’t even keep up with my basic tactics studies.

I gradually resumed my chess studies in September/October 2023. I am hoping that 2024 will be more like 2022 in terms of sticking with a structured training plan for the entire year!