My new chess obsession

I love chess, in fact I love it so much one of my first blogposts was on chess. And very recently, I reached two huge milestones:

• I beat my highest ever chess rating;
• I surpassed 600 Elo (that's how chess ratings are measured)

Looking back, I've always loved chess. I remember playing it from a very young age, but I was never good at it. In fact, I was gifted a chess set when I was about nine, I think, a Garry Kasparov themed set actually. Kasparov is arguably the greatest chess player to ever live, by the way, I could only dream of being as good as him. Admittedly, I've barely used that set, but I have played loads of times with my dad. I remember all the countless defeats, as well as the odd win, how great it felt to finally outsmart him. 

Then, when I was fifteen, I had a friend who was very into chess. For a few months, we'd go up to the music rooms to hang out during lunch, and we'd play chess whilst the jazz club did rehearsals. I guess we had a bit of a chess club going on, with us two alongside some other mates. Then he showed me chess.com, where you can play against literally anyone in the world, and I was hooked. I quickly reached an Elo of 400, and I was chuffed with that. I wasn't that impressive, at least not compared to my friend, who always beat me, but I guess you've always got to start somewhere. This was around April 2023, so pre-blog, for context.

I may as well briefly explain what Elo is now, because I'm going to refer to it loads. Basically, whenever you beat someone in chess, you typically gain ranking points proportional to how good your opponent is. 400 Elo basically means you're a beginner: you know how all the pieces work, but you'll probably lose to a scholar's mate. More on Elo here.

Afterwards, we all did our GCSEs and headed off to our summer holidays, and the chess hype died down. In retrospect, I bet everyone was obsessed back then because some show had come out, and suddenly chess was the cool game everyone wanted to play. I do remember someone bringing up Bobby Fischer one time, maybe there was some documentary on him. I was similar, taking an almost two month long break before starting up again and reaching a new Elo high of 473 at the end of the year.

From this point on, I only played in intermittent bursts, usually driven by me randomly remembering chess existed, giving it a go, and playing countless games for a week. In one of these bursts, I reached my new high of 558 around the start of 2024, basically meaning I was still an amateur, but somewhat competent. Eventually, this slumped down to 489, when I took another lengthy break, this time for over a year. 

Since then, I'd mostly forgotten about chess. It's not that I didn't care about it, more that I'd found more hobbies, and I was also really busy with my blog and my A Levels. Not even the post-sixth form summer holiday, with its loneliness-churned anxieties and boredom, could get me back into chess. Whenever I did, I'd inevitably go on a losing streak and get so frustrated, I'd give up on it again.

That said, there were two key moments in my chess history during that time. One of them was watching the Queen's Gambit on Netflix, which is an alright show, maybe a bit contrived. However, it helped reignite my interest in playing chess and wanting to be competent at it. The other was doing chess as an extracurricular at school, where I learnt what a fork and skewer were from a history teacher who also happened to be decent at chess. I doubt he's reading this post, then again he knows I have a blog, so...thanks for the lessons! 

But otherwise, that was it; I wasn't really chess mad. That's until this holiday, though, when I picked it up once again. At this point, my Elo was a 373, and I wanted to properly learn how to be a great player. Solid players have Elos of at least 1200 for context, so I had a long way to go, but I was determined. I wanted to learn a few skills, actually, chess just so happened to be the only one to stick.

I might have gone a bit overboard. I've played over 300 games in the past two months, winning exactly half of them. I've watched my Elo touch 558, before seeing it crash back down below 400. I started reviewing my games, and my social media feeds slowly became overgrown with chess memes and tutorials. Then, something just clicked, and I've ended up going on a decent run, culminating in me crossing the 600 Elo barrier.

I get that none of this post makes any sense to you, it's filled with loads of jargon and the occasional childhood memory. However, I am secretly proud to have made it this far. I bet I'll come crashing back down to 300 as soon as this post is published, but it's nice to think how high I've gotten. I've changed a lot since that first post, which is funny to think about.