I have played chess my whole life but was never very good at it.  Every few years I would try to play a chess computer, would easily defeat the first level and find myself completely nuked at level 2.  The learning curve was too steep, I just didn’t get it.  Summer of 2020, I started getting chess videos recommended to me by youtube.  I watched a few, figured out a few small things, and decided to try some things out.  On January 9, 2021, I created an account on chess.com.

This is my story.

There are 4 speeds of play at chess.com:  Daily, rapid, blitz, and bullet.  I am going to focus on rapid alone in this article.  I suck at blitz and bullet is mostly stupid.  I play those to test out new openings, but rapid I consider my “real” level.  I mostly play 10 minute games (each player has 10 minutes total to complete their moves), but have played some 15|10 games (15 mins total, plus 10 second increment per move).  I wish 10|5 was more standard, playing with an increment makes more sense.  Rarely does the clock matter in the 10 minute games, but those times it does come into play, there are some strategies to drain your opponents clock that won’t work with an increment.

Okay, enough intro: stats time.

First, I played 3 Daily games in the last year.  In two, I defeated Don Escaped Texas and in the other I lost to OMWC’s son.

Rapid I have played 1244 games.  My record is 601-577-66.  Because chess.com tries to match you up with someone with similar Elo ratings, your record will always be about even.  A slight winning record, as in my case, indicates some improvement.

With white, I am 319-253-36.  As black, 282-324-30.  White has a small advantage and it shows there.

A quick interlude on chess Elo ratings.  The ratings formula means that for a 400 pt difference, the better player would win 10 of 11 matches.  For 800 pt difference, 100 of 101.  For 1600 pt difference, like between me and the world’s best players, 10,000 out of 10,001.  Current world champion Magnus Carlsen has a tendency to get drunk and play online, so that is the only way the 1 could occur.  And even then, I doubt it.

The default starting Elo on chess.com is 800 (it will start you at 400 or 1200 based on certain settings, but I started with the normal 800 – and I think if you are a titled player, it will start you with your actual FIDE rating, but I am not sure about that).  My current rating is 1094.  I peaked in September at 1210.  My best win is over a player ranked 1215.   My longest win streak is 8, first done in Feb of 2021, but matched a few times since.  I think my longest losing streak is 7, but chess.com doesn’t report that.

In the last 90 days, the average opponent I beat was 1094, the average loss was to an 1120.  I think in that area is my real range.  I generally do well against opponents in the 1000s, and poorly when they get in the high 1100s, and play fairly evenly against 1100-1150.  I had a horrible stretch in December where I tanked to almost 1000, so I have been moving back up from that.

It seems to be common, a nice win streak gets you a new high that you can’t really hold, followed by a losing streak that takes you too low and you have to grind back up.  Same happened to me when I first broke 1100 in May of 2021.  I crashed back to the 900s before grinding my way back.  I broke my old high in September and went on a streak that pushed me up over 1200.  But that didn’t last.

Anyway, it’s been a fun year.  After 45 years or so of futzing around at chess, I feel like I know something about the game now.  And realize just how bad I suck at it.

I leave you with a chess puzzle.  And a song.  Yes, it is obvious, but I didn’t know an extended version existed.

 

 

White to Move. Mate in 2.