Intro part I: Why am I here?

Thus do I venture into the world of blogging.

No ego here. I long ago decided that either we are all special, or none of us is.

So why this blog? Why now?

Chess has been a favorite pastime of mine for nearly two decades. Like many players, I desire to improve. I've scoured the internet and gathered a sizeable personal library of chess books, all in the pursuit of greater glory when at the board.

Of course, playing and studying chess is really a personal journey, is it not? There will always be someone out there better than you; even the World Champion loses games.

Why play then? On the surface, it is a fun game. A way to pass time during our brief stay in this mortal and ephemeral world. Going deeper, it is a game of skill and an enjoyable way to meet friends and socialize with others. On the deepest of levels, it is a journey of personal improvement and self-discovery.

But let's take a step back and not look too deeply--yet. What this blog is primarily about is chess improvement. To improve, we chess players do many things: read books (and sometimes finish them!), do loads of tactics and puzzles, pour over training positions, play rated games against strong opposition, study the games of Masters, and even pay hefty sums of cash to take lessons from titled players.

But most players--most adult players--rarely improve to any significant degree, if at all. I've known myriad players who have been stuck in their rating categories for decades.

And the Knights Errant? They have more or less proven that MDLM's techniques are mostly not reproducible. Why exactly is that?

Why do most players fail to improve while others (especially juniors) often sail to Master status within a few short years?

In attempting to understand this, I've read, read some more, and then read, researched, and scoured the internet as thoroughly as could be expected. But the answer just doesn't exist. No one seems to really understand why some improve while others remain incorrigibly stagnant.

Spoiler: I don't have the answers!

But I am attempting an experiment. On myself. I want to see just how much I can improve. I am a busy adult with loads of responsibilities, including a family. Can I continue to improve without selling my soul or becoming a chess monk who does nothing else but train?

Let's be honest, most players don't train much, and often do not train properly. We do tactics puzzles like crazy, then stop completely for weeks or months at a time. We don't learn our openings very well and don't always understand the middlegame plans. We purchase and begin many chess books, but finish very few and study even fewer. How many books have you read through completely while painstakingly studying it for full comprehension? If you are anything like me, probably no more than one or two, and possibly zero!

So we end up with a set of chess skills that is laughable. Our chess foundation is weak and riddled with Swiss-cheese holes.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; and so it is with chess.

Our first goal, then, is to identify our weaknesses; second, add knowledge; third, put this into practice.

By identifying our weaknesses, we can commit to specific and targeted training. Miss simple tactics? Okay, sign up for Chess Tempo and get crackin'! Do you often get a superior position out of the opening but then blow it? You probably need to better understand the middlegame plans and positions that arise from your openings. Getting stomped in the endgame? You guessed it, you need to target that weakness!

To add knowledge, we need to read and study good books. And complete them. And actually understand them. Part of the challenge here is determining what is the right book. Many books regurgitate the same information. Or perhaps they merely cover one aspect of chess (e.g. pawn chains) but fail to discuss related--but equally important--concepts such as pawn breaks, how to play with the IQP, etc. What we need is a comprehensive training regimen. Here we have Lev Alburts' books, Yusupov's series, and even some online programs (like Chess.com's prodigy/genius program, or Igor Ivanov's products).

Finally, we must take what we have learned and put it into practice. Just like learning a foreign language, all the memorized words in the world won't help you when suddenly thrust into a situation with native speakers fluently chatting away while you drown in despair. Smother mate is much easier to find over the board once you have actually done it, or lost to it.

In my next post I will discuss:

1) My personal chess journey thus far;
2) Why I think that I (and many of you) absolutely and unequivocally possess the ability to improve more than we believe, and;
3) my method for improvement.