Tag: games (Page 3 of 3)

So, I put my plan in motion and began playing at chess.com. I started unrated and had to play five games to get my first rating.

In the first game I got a victory by resignation on the 16th move, after my white knight forked the black king and queen. But the game review said I played with only 69.5 accuracy. I guess it didn’t like me taking too long to check mate. Despite that, it said I played two great moves. Estimated 900 rating for this game. Opponent from: Philippines. Opening: Ruy López, Morphy Defense, Deferred Schliemann Defense (I wish I knew that’s what I was playing).

The second game, playing with the black pieces, I won by checkmate on the 43rd move. This time I had a much better accuracy, 83.0. Estimated 1350 rating for this game. Opponent from: India. Opening: Queen’s Pawn , 1 … c6.

The third game, playing with the black pieces again, I won by resignation on the 25th move, after my knight forked the king and a rook. My accuracy here was 76.5. Estimated 1200 rating for this game. Opponent from: Indonesia. Opening: King’s Pawn, Leonardis Variation.

I won the fourth game with the white pieces on the 48th move, by checkmate. There was a moment where I thought I was lost, but I managed to play a discovered attack on the black queen with check (a great move, said the computer) and that turned the game around. My accuracy here was 73.3. Estimated 1200 rating for this game. Opponent from: Brazil. Opening: Colle System (I learned that from Rey Enigma on YouTube).

The fifth game, with the black pieces, I won on the 20th move by resignation, after my opponent miscalculated an exchange of pieces and emerged with one piece less than me. My accuracy was the highest so far, 82.8. Estimated 1550 rating for this game. Opponent from: USA. Opening: Queen’s Pawn, Chigorin Variation.

So, after five games, I have a rating. To my surprise it’s 1264, beyond my realistic goal of 1000 and my optimistic goal of 1200. But I don’t think it will be so easy from now on, as I will keep getting stronger opponents. I expect my rating to stand around this level or even go down, because soon I will find players who will defeated me. I’m curious to see when I will encounter this brick wall.

It would be an exaggeration to say that I know how to play chess. Yes, when I was a kid I learned how to move the pieces and also a few basic principles (control the center, develop knights before bishops, etc). That doesn’t entitle me to say that I am a chess player. But one of my projects for 2024 (yes, I have many projects) is to properly learn how to play chess.

I have a plan. I will start by creating an account on chess.com. Then, before playing any real games, I will study all their tutorials and practice a bit against the computer. Only after all that I will start playing against other players, and analyzing my games in the hope of learning from my mistakes. I will play rapid games, ten minutes for each player, which I think is a good time control for a beginner like me. Their system pairs players of similar levels, so I believe I will advance fast through the rankings at the beginning, until I reach my real level. Then I will start getting paired against players who are a bit stronger than me, and that’s when I will have to get used to losing more than winning.

I’ve established a quantifiable goal for this project. Actually, two goals. One realistic and one optimistic. According to the International Chess Federation (FIDE), the best players in the world, usually called super grand masters, have a rating above 2700. On December 2023, only 35 people in the whole world were part of that elite group. And only one was above the 2800 mark. That’s Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen, possibly the best player of all time. The ratings at chess.com are a bit above the FIDE ratings, so I will round up the top rating to 3000 (for someone like me, 2700 is as unattainable as 3000) and use that number as a reference for my goals. The realistic goal is to reach one third of that mark, a rating of 1000. That would make me comfortable saying I know how to play chess. The optimistic goal is to reach 40% of that mark, a rating of 1200. Anything beyond that would require an enormous effort and may not even be possible. But it’s good to have goals.