About Me

My father taught me to play chess when I was a child. I remember he played 1. e4 and played what I later learned was the Ruy Lopez. Sometimes he played the King's Gambit. He beat me easily. Until one day when I beat him. It was a great feeling.

Aside from the occasional games with my father, I didn't play chess until some time in my early twenties (around 1986) when I joined a chess club near the US Navy base at which I was stationed. Unfortunately, the chess club closed shortly after I started and that was the end of chess.

After the Navy, I played a little informal speed chess with a work colleague. Intending to get better, I collected a number of chess books I never read. Except I did read a book by Reuben Fine called "The Middle Game in Chess". Since I didn't really play, I never got the chance to put what I learned into practice and I don't remember much about the book. I remember I really enjoyed going through the 2 chapters related to mating attacks and attacks on the king.

Through the decades I never got rid of those books, always thinking I'd pick up chess again and read them. About 3 years ago my wife and I were cleaning out our basement. We were trying to be serious about reducing clutter. She put the question to me: "Are you really ever going to read these books? You've had them for decades". To the Goodwill they went.

Unbeknownst to me, one of my sons had signed up at chess.com and one year ago, in August 2025, he challenged me to a game of chess. I got an account at chess.com and we played (beat him easily). I quickly got hooked. I was 62 years old and recently retired and thought I finally had time to devote to playing chess. I just wished I had those books I threw out 2 years prior.

I wasted a lot of time playing blitz games before deciding I needed to take a more disciplined approach and try to improve. One year after starting at chess.com, my Rapid rating was 1350 over 255 games. But blitz wasn't the only trap I had fallen in to. I spent a lot of time watching YouTube chess videos, got more chess courses on chessable that I can ever watch, and jumped from chess resource to chess resource.

I learned about lichess.org and created my bekesta account there, intending it to be a reset account where I played "serious" chess, which didn't really happen.

Then last month I signed up for Noël Studer's Simplified Chess Improvement System.

I'm going to make a serious attempt at keeping a simple chess training program and see where it takes me over the course of one year. I will be using my Lichess.org bekesta account for all my chess improvement work. I'll still probably play some fun games on my chess.com account, but I will try to keep that to a minimum.