The Goal To Reach 2000

Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash

I have been playing chess semi-seriously for about six years. During that time, however, I have participated in only a few tournaments so I can't gauge my playing strength based on the small sample of games I have played. My goal since then has been to improve my chess skills so that I can reach a rating of at least 2000.

The last tournament in which I participated was back in 2014. In terms of reaching my goal, I haven't really made much of an effort. In part, this is due to my busy schedule. But I can also attribute it to my lack of motivation to pursue the goal. To be fair, I was in college for the past five years so I didn't really have a lot of time to play competitive chess. However, now that I'm out of college, I can say I have a little more time on my hands to spend on chess.

Though I would like to say that I bear most of the responsibility for not getting closer to reaching my goal of a 2000 rating, I would like to put out an excuse. Right now, I'm still at 1811 based on my country's rating list. I started out with 1820 but I had poor performances in two out of three of the tournaments I joined.

The Challenges

One of the reasons why I haven't participated in tournaments is the scarcity of them. There is not much support from the national federation so local chess clubs hold their own tournaments, funded from their own pockets, and from the registration fees they collect. Apart from the very few chess tournaments being held, schedules and venues are also hindrances to my participation. Most that are scheduled on the weekends are either very far or on Sundays which I usually reserve for other activities.

Now, I admit that I feel insecure about participating in chess tournaments. In the past tournaments I played, I made a lot of mistakes which cost me the game. I was too reckless and tried to experiment with lines that I didn't know. In certain games, I pushed too hard and it backfired. I'm more sober now. I don't play risky or unsound moves. I try to avoid them as much as possible and opt for more solid or positional lines. That would be thanks to chess players I've watched like John Bartholomew.

My Position Now

I play chess online nowadays. I have also been using Chessable to acquire ideas, motifs, and principles in certain lines which I like. But from my experience, I'm not privy to memorizing variations or opening lines because they don't make sense to me. I would just rather want to play moves with which I'm comfortable and ones that don't give me a disadvantage. That's basically what I've done to improve on my chess. Sometime soon, I plan on getting a coach and have a more structured form of training. I would love to have someone look at my games or the way I play then point out the mistakes and the proper thought process behind ideas.

I don't really know how long it will take me to reach 2000. To be honest, I don't even have an official FIDE rating yet since those would require me to participate in FIDE sanctioned tournaments which, again, my country lacks. It would take a lot of resources - time, money, and energy - to get that far. At the moment, I think I will be satisfied with participating in local tournaments. Hopefully those will be sanctioned by our national federation so that I can at least have a point of comparison to gauge where I am and where I've been. I want to know how much I've progressed so that I would know how long I still have to go.

Moving Forward

I'm going to post on this blog more frequently. They will mostly be analyses of my games and just random stuff about chess. If there are things that I find interesting related to chess, I will also post them here. I haven't been able to blog a lot either in the past years because I have been focusing on other things. But with a more relaxed schedule, I can take time to chill and ponder about chess. So here's to the next chapters of my chess journey and yours!