My Chess Year

The end of 2022 coincided roughly with the end of my first full year of studying chess (although I lost a couple of months dealing with a knee that ultimately had to be replaced). Soon after I started playing, I set a ratings goal for myself of 600. It amuses me to think of this now, because when I set it I had no idea that there were many different ratings systems, which are not easily translatable to one another. I finished the year with a chess.com rapid rating of 556, and although I am as eager as always to go higher–especially to reach 660 so that I can climb out of the Chess Dojo Training basement–I am pretty satisfied with this for my first year mark. My satisfaction with it increased after I heard Daniel Lona talk with Amy Shaw about ratings on the Chess Experience podcast. They were saying that one number cannot possibly represent all the nuances of someone’s chess performance and suggested thinking of your rating as a range of minus or plus 50 from that number. Which conveniently makes my 2022 rating 506-606. Although I am now very aware of the vagaries of ratings and the pros and cons of using them as a measure of one’s chess, I am still going to set myself a ratings goal for 2023–800.

As with ratings, when I first started playing chess I don’t think I really understood anything about the various time controls. Basically I played whatever time was put before me, which usually happened to be 10 minutes or less (per side) because I was in group settings online designed for people to be able to play multiple games in a short time. It took surprisingly long for me to realize that I needed more time to think about my moves and that I might play much better given the opportunity to do so. Eventually I settled on a time control of 30 minutes per side when seeking playing partners online, and that has been a revelation. Not only has my chess been better, but the opponents with whom I am matched tend to be more serious players, that is, not all tricksters who lead with a “wayward queen attack.” Presumably that goes hand in hand with the fact that a 30 minute time control means that the game can go as long as 60 minutes. Even with 30 minutes, I am losing on time sometimes, but as a relative beginner I don’t think I need to worry about that too much. I assume that more proficiency will bring about some gains in speed.

For a number of months after I started playing, when I didn’t have a friend to play with in person or online, I played against the chess bots of lichess.org and chess.com. This felt easy and safe, I guess because no one was watching (chess.com does not even store those games in your record, although lichess.does). I can’t remember why, but one day I realized that my chess would probably improve more if I played real people instead. It may sound strange, but this takes a bit of courage. Even if you will never meet this person in the flesh and likely never encounter them again online, they are a real person, which triggers a deeper level of accountability than does a bot. I also discovered that playing people around my rating level was the most rewarding for me. Too much lower, and it is not challenging enough; too much higher, and you are so busy defending/being intimidated/dreading the loss that you can’t enjoy or learn from the superior player.

The lessons discussed above can be put more succinctly as: Play real people, around your rating, at a time control that suits your chess ability. In earlier blog posts I also recommend getting a coach and analyzing your games. I plan to keep all of these things in mind in 2023 as I continue to savor this incredibly interesting and amazingly difficult pastime.