Before home internet. That’s the last time I would have been considered an “active” chess player. At that time the resources for learning were either books or people. Back then I was a member of the local chess club, and I had a small handful of books including Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, Pawn Power In Chess by Hans Kmoch, Nimzovich’s My System, and a massive encyclopedia of openings that probably dated from the 1970s.

I recently got the bug again. I did some internet reading, and started watching a few Youtube videos. I loaded the Lichess app onto my phone (totally free and no ads!), and after a couple of games against bots decided to try some rated 10+5 games (10 minutes + 5 seconds added per move).

To backtrack just a bit — when I played at the club a zillion years ago many of the players were better than I was. Everyone had favorite openings and pretty much stuck to them. My openings were mostly sharp, tactical, and study intensive because I liked games like that. (Ruy Lopez or Sicilian Dragon as white, Sicilian Dragon as black when I could get them. I was trying to attack and channel Fischer and Alekhine.) Overall though, the whole experience was pretty controlled and genteel.

When I recently started playing online I discovered I was playing against a large percentage of people who would substitute traps, straight aggression, or just insane crazy moves in place of what I’d call an “opening”. Initially I had trouble with it and it’s taken a little while to adjust, but by now I’ve figured out that if I just play it cool and “sound” — most of that stuff blows up at some point and I’ll have a superior position. But it’s wild, at the level where I am there’s a lot of rock fights.

So now I’d be considered an Adult Learner. Or Adult Improver if was ambitious and trying for a high rating. What that means to the community is that I have interest in the game but I also have a very definite ceiling as to how far I could reasonably advance, mostly due to lack of a malleable brain and a finite time available for commitment. Which is fine with me, I’m having fun with it. I enjoy the learning and I enjoy the competitiveness of playing the games. I do want to improve but I don’t have any illusions of ever getting to be better than the level of a respectable club player.

I’ll close with a few things that have been helpful for me getting back into the swing of it after a very long time away.

For Youtube: I watched all of the Chessbrahs Building Habits series. Building Habits is pretty universally recommended and it helped me feel much more comfortable and confident. I watched a number of Gothamchess videos (Levy Roseman). Lately it’s been Daniel Naroditsky, who to my mind does the best job of teaching more advanced concepts and getting deeper into the positions and potential positions in his games.

For general books: How To Reassess Your Chess: Chess Mastery Through Chess Imbalances by Jeremy Silman (4th ed). By far the most recommended book I’ve seen and for good reason. It covers some of everything. I can do without some of the writing style, but it was a very good refresher for a lot of concepts for me with a few new ideas sprinkled in. Lots of people say they get better after reading this book. His endgame book is very highly regarded as well. I own it, but I haven’t gotten deeply into it yet.

I also feel more comfortable when I have openings to refer to as a templates for piece and pawn placement. For me, even learning 5-7 moves into a smallish numbers of common openings helps me not wind up all twisted going into the midgame. My pieces tend to wind up better deployed if I have the framework of an idea to work around.

I always played e4 (Kings Pawn) back in the day (The Fischer influence, again). Returning to chess, I was looking for a repertoire that wouldn’t require a ton of study and matched what I think I want the games to broadly look like. I landed on A Simple Chess Opening Repertoire For White by Sam Collins. It includes some openings I had already independently decided I was going to use, such as the Alapin Sicilian against …c5 and the Italian Game against …e5 . There were a few of other commonalities as well. The overall theme of the book is sound openings requiring limited study where I can still start with my preferred e4. The repertoire is based around white steering the game into Isolated Queens Pawn (IQP) structures, where the white advantage is to come from superior familiarity with the ideas of the position. The IQP approach is newish to me, but I happened to spend part of a week in a cabin in the woods with the book and no internet, and I’ve now worked through most of the main lines presented. I think the framework has promise.

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Thoughts about the blog:

I used to write about games fairly frequently here. Given that chess currently has my interest I’d imagine I’ll be posting about the subject as well going forward. I can also see my sourdough baking getting more attention. We’ll see what else gets my attention next — I was feeling in a rut, and today’s chess post is fresh air.