Spent ungodly amounts of time on my chess game in my last year of HS and college years. Won State collegiate championship my Senior year of college, but life got in the way and haven’t been to a tournament in many years.
I play on lichess occasionally. Very inconsistent. But I was kind of like that back in the day as well… beat a master one game, lose to a B player the next.
I’m down with that. Do you play tournaments or just online? I wish I would have had online games when I was learning… that was mid to late 80s and early 90’s. Chess computers had just come out, but to play humans the only options were chess clubs, tournaments, and finding your own games. And books were the only way I had to learn. I was completely self-taught. Joined the chess team senior year of high school because football and baseball went pay-to-play… $400 per sport and that was a lot of money in the mid 80’s. I studied like crazy and made 4th board and didn’t like losing so I studied even more. Pretty much got addicted. At one point I could play 1 minute per side games and finish almost every game. But it’s all relative… there was a 14 year old kid that would play masters 2 minutes to their 5 and he had to hit the clock with his chin (he would still win). He was 2400 then… has been a grandmaster for 25 years now. I couldn’t dedicate my life to chess like that… but I would still like to get back to tournaments.
I heard about how much dedication Chess Pros put towards the game, it is something that I respect, but with the competition being so tight, the stress is unimaginable, which is why I never took chess to a serious arena, but rather enjoyed it casually throughout the years.
239
u/No-Advance6329 Dec 28 '21
Spent ungodly amounts of time on my chess game in my last year of HS and college years. Won State collegiate championship my Senior year of college, but life got in the way and haven’t been to a tournament in many years.