Thursday, December 01, 2011

Chess Chronicles - Getting Better?


You have to ignore the beginning of the graph because it's not truly indicative.

Towards the end of October I was on fire - winning 13 games in a row. My rating reached 1085 on Chess.com and I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Then I went into a serious slump. My rating crashed perilously close to 900. What was going on?

I think I figured it out. I wasn't castling. Since then I changed my strategy to castle AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and AT ALL COSTS.

That must of done the trick, along with increased playing experience, of course. After all, I've only been playing on the site for 2 months now. Today I finally cracked the 1100 rating mark and my chisel chest is puffing out again.

Out of 800,000 players I'm smack dab in the middle of the pack at the moment. We'll see how far I can get as time goes on.

Oh, my son?

Today, on ChessKid.com, he beat someone who had a rating over 1,000. John was positively beaming all day long!

He and I are learning together and it's truly an awesome experience.

While John didn't do too well (0-2-1) in his first scholastic chess tournament last month...

Only an absolute Moron would bet against him going forward. Seriously. We are just getting started - with books, lessons, competition, etc.

I remember, vividly, when we were at a friend's house and this little girl, a few months younger than him, could count to 10 but my toddler son couldn't. Man, did I feel terrible! My stomach literally sank.

Of course now my kid can derive the quadratic formula:


....and that little girl??? She's no doubt still adding 2 and 3 in a 1st grade government school classroom!

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