Welcome to my blog. A journey into chess to answer the question if Adult Improvers can reach the title of Master. However, before we get into that, another idea came into my mind for my first entry into Chess Blogging. Truth be told this is not my first entry as I started on popular platforms such as Chess.com and Lichess.org. I found those sites clunky and not as easy to work with when it came to formating and such. There was not any easy way to post to both let alone copy and paste from one to the other without some major retooling of your artical or message. Hence, we find ourselves here on Substack. Thanks Evan (aka TheChessLobster as known in the Chesspunks Community). I too belong to this community to which I met Evan, coincidentally enough also belonged to my local Chess Club here in Waukesha. We were quick to friend and our love of chess was clearly evident as well. So goes Chess Improvement.
Let’s rewind a bit to one year ago almost to the day when I made the decision to come back to Over The Board (OTB) Chess. My initial goal was some of my own personal improvement but the main goal was more to introduce my third son to the game and the club. For those of you who have read my other blog entries you may recall some of my history as a chess player. Let me recount for those who maybe missed those posts and would be new to this journey.
Like many others here and around the world I was introduced to chess from my dad who taught me the game at eight years old. Similar to most he showed me the basic moves and how all the pieces worked together. What they were called and how they all moved on the board. However, after that I was left to my own devices. Really the man taught me NOTHING. Thanks a lot Dad. Only kidding of course. I had to learn by playing. Failure after failure I could not topple the giant that was my father. Life events happened, those I will not regail you with in this post but, I eventually reached High School age and at my school there was a chess club. I promply joined. I was 16 when I finally beat my dad. Went to the State Championships twice. We did not have an amazing team so I cannot really recall our placing but I remember it being rather mediocre at best. It was there I had my first real glimpse into competitive team chess. From there I was hooked.
At this time Kasparov was the world champion and slotted to face a new “computer program, Deep Blue.” Yeah I am that old. I was so enthralled with the idea a computer would be able to beat a world champion. After all computers were faily new especially in households at this time. And wouldn’t you know it Kasparov Won the first time. IBM made adjustments and later was able to best the champ. Dawn of the computer age it would seem. I do remember Chessmaster 10 with Josh Waitzkin. If you haven’t seen Seaching for Bobby Fischer its a good watch.
I also grew up as a young man hearing about Bobby Fischer as well. So naturally when you become a chess player you find such players like Fischer and Kasparov captivating and want to play like they do. So what do you do, you go to book stores and find any material you can find on them. I spent hard earned money on books for improvement just to try to be like them. I had to know more! Online chess was not what it is today.
Found a local club. Played a bit in the late 90’s and early 2000s. Took a break as I was working and had other interests at the time. Then came to my local club yet again in the mid 2000’s. This time I was there for some real improvement. I wanted to get better. It may have been the first time in my life I was serious about improvement. I studied mainly the Polgar tomb. For those who do not know its a mostrous book called 5335 Problems, Combinations and Games. Its fantastic for an enthusiastic learner.
My time was short before life circumstances got in the way yet again. Same in 2010-2011 when I started dating my current wife and decided now that I had children, twins, that I wanted to share with them the game that was passed to me from my father. Again I returned to the club and introduced them to chess and tournament play. We played in weekend tournaments as well as scholastic level as well for the boys. That lasted less than a year before school started again and it fell out of importance. My wife and and I got married. Had two more kids as well. 10 years of time passed. I was still playing online but only daily games on chess.com. It kept me playing at least. Some of these 14 day long daily tournaments I am only now reaching the final round within. Pretty crazy to play in a chess tournament for over a decade.
June 2022 I returned to the club for my now third serious time in chess. Now to bring my youngest son and share with him this amazing game and community. It has been one year almost to the day since I have returned to chess. This time is different however. Maybe it is the people I met, my new friends, also adult improvers all at various levels. My son who seems to be really interested in it as well. I can tell this is much different than previous tenure. My effort for chess study and coaching, my son, is heightened greatly from it ever was before. Perhaps its because I am older and more patient. It is unclear to me currently.
So for the last year I have put in what I call serious chess study. Daily tasks, Joined the Chess Dojo, deep chess imersion it would seem. I have a study plan, though it’s changed a few times, a plan I am following nonetheless. A community with like minded improvers as well. Now my passion for chess is through the roof. I have always enjoyed it before but now it seems unalike previous times. I cannot really put my finger on why though. I expect it may be due to the community.
OK, so now you are pretty much caught up to present day at this point. Chess Improvement: a paradox indeed. Reason being is we need to fail so much to improve it seems. Moreso than I have encountered in any other subject in my life experience to date. You fail and fail and fail to the point many times where we almost quit and many even do. I think perhaps it was not just life circumstances as stated above to my depature from the game but failure and lack of knowing how to best deal with it.
I think back to the eight years I played my dad and lost every game. The one thing he always told me was to keep trying and eventually things would start to click. That was it. Such a simple statement. Easy to say but not easy to do. It is difficult to fail and fail and fail. The weight of that failure pushes on you and if you do not have some way to diverting it off it would be easy to crumble and many do.
The general consensus is, at least it seems to be in most of the chess communities I belong to now, is that consistency is key. Do not look at failure as just that you failed rather, its an opportunity to learn. There are valuable lessons to be learned from each of those failures. If you can look at these failures consistantly, learn from these lessons, the wins will come. Improvement will occur. Rinse and repeat to reach your goals. If you are looking at chess as win and lose each game it will be easy to fall off track with your goals. If you are feeling upset or down about a losing streak or its been an off few weeks, or you had a poor performance in a tournament, take a step back and ask yourself “Am I better this year than I was last year?” We play chess by the year not by the game or day. Learn from those failures as to not repeat them and continue improving.
Which path will you take?
“I have not failed. I,ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison
Make sure to check out Evan’s (The Chess Lobster’s) Ocean of Chess Newsletter here.
I'm also investing more in my chess learning. Really interested to see where you take this newsletter. How often do you plan on posting?
Nice post and look forward to following along