Diving In

Greetings! Welcome to yet another chess improvement blog. After trolling the chess blogs of the Knights Errant, I’ve decided to dive in….not necessarily to the circles themselves, but at least to the world of chess blogging. I think that it’ll be good for me, though I’m not sure yet that I have enough time for chess improvement, yet alone writing about it.

No offence, but this is probably more “for me” than “for you.” I figure if I write about what’s going on, especially the games that I’m playing and my study progress, that it’ll help keep me on track. Having the occasional reader (and hopefully commenter) along for the ride is just a bonus.

So, for starters, let’s make this post about where I currently am, and where I hope to go.

I’ve known how to play chess since I was quite young, but just played occasionally with my friends. I never tried to make chess a serious hobby until about 5 years ago. At that point I got tired of playing my old chess computer and decided to check out online chess. I started at Yahoo! and quickly grew tired of the lack of seriousness there, and moved on to FICS, where I have played on and off since. More off than I’d like.

Time for a quick aside: I find that my chess interest waxes and wanes, and I’ll be bitten by the chess bug for a few months here and there, and then tire of it. I’m not sure what drives this, but I do know that so far this hasn’t been a recipe for success. I’ve learned some things over the past few years, but I feel ready to get more serious.

I joined the USCF a little over a year ago, and have played in only 3 OTB events in that time. A one day rapid tournament at my local club back in July of ‘05 (The Boylston Chess Club in Davis Square, Somerville, MA), the BU open in November of ‘05 (where I apparently split the U1200 prize with three other folks but didn’t know that until very recently) and the Eastern Class Championship in Sturbridge earlier this year. My record in that time is +4 =0 -9 for a shiny USCF rating of 871.

Bleh.

Now, I’m sure many sub 1000 players say this, but I think I’m a little better than that. Of course, it’s now up to me to prove it.

My plan isn’t as fancy as some who are out here, but I’m keeping it simple for now: I’m going to do lots of tactics puzzles and play in more events.

I made progress towards the latter of those goals this past week. I entered the BCC Thursday Night Swiss tournament for the month of September. This’ll get me one 40/90 G/25 game per week for the month. I led off with a loss this week to drop my all time tournament record to -6 overall, but given that the guy was rated about 700 points higher than I was I guess I couldn’t have expected to win. I don’t think I acquitted myself too poorly, and that game will be the subject of an upcoming post.

Oh, right, the title. So all of you other chess bloggers have these nifty titles. I couldn’t think of a good one, so I stole one from an acquaintance of mine. “Strong Among the Weak” is a phrase that Chad Ellis once used to describe his Magic: The Gathering skills, and in particular he was discussing trying to break into a higher class of play. Now, you may rightly say to yourself that an 871 isn’t strong among anyone. Fair and not fair. Sure, I’m rated below the vast majority of rated chess players (I know I can find the percentiles on USCF’s website somewhere, but I’m too lazy right now), but I tend to beat anyone who doesn’t actually consider himself a ‘chess player.’

So, I find myself straddling that line between someone who plays chess, and chess players, and I’d like to move from the former group to the latter. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll keep you up to date. The next couple of posts will discuss my tactics situation in more detail and look at last week’s game.